


the way we were

by ruruka



Category: Death Note (Anime & Manga)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-22
Updated: 2019-04-10
Packaged: 2019-11-03 20:31:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 19
Words: 35,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17884721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ruruka/pseuds/ruruka
Summary: his past mistakes are eating him alive.





	1. Chapter 1

He’s not law, but the order. He’s not a detective, but Yagami Light.

He’s not God, but he is, and he’s none of those things and everything in between, and he’s love and he’s loss and he’s walking today, because it’s the warmest January morning, this the twenty-eighth, in a brand new year where he’s just exactly a month from twenty-four and he’s walking today, because it’s warm.

Warm enough for the vendors to dawdle outside with their pushcarts and stands all down the left sidewalk; green leaf vegetables all along the row, those in season now, leeks and cabbages and what fruits are available as winter rumbles away. He eyes the strawberries on his way past. Lusciously scarlet. So fresh they pause his steps. There’s hardly so much a crowd here, no mall candle sale but rather the lingering pickers among the fruit. A woman in a thick scarf peruses berries. Another, just behind, murmurs something or other about how sweet the grapefruit smells today. Light must agree. Nearly is it with a smile that he catches himself breaking stroll to glance across the vendor sections. At his approach, a man weathered with age hefts a wood crate of produce as he squints to grin at him. His apron is smudged with soot, has to be whittled to five-foot-three by this time now, though Light can vaguely enough recall half a three decade stretch back along where he’d held one hand with his mother to pick out October anjou pears, and a very same squint and grin had ruffled the top of his hair. It’s January now, and it’s warm today, and Light is close enough to part his lips for greeting when he’s hustled about the same as the mikans that topple out from the hands behind him.

“Oh, _goodness!_ ” She’s got to be pushing fifties soon, this stout little woman in her head kerchief and apron to match, wood crate toppled over at her feet with a double dozen oranges rolling ahead. Light, in his mighty lust for what is sound, turns to her dismay, and doesn’t care for how long he’d spent ironing his slacks; they crimp with his kneel downward to the dusty pavement.

“Here, let me help you, Miss,” he proffers, touch delicate against the fruit it handles. “I’m sorry, I must not have seen you there.”

Mirroring his every lift, the woman is frenetic to dismiss him, go on and on about how her husband is most probably right to nag her about needing glasses and he here’s nothing to worry over, her fault her fault. All the while, Light places oranges into their crate, knelt on the sidewalk to help a helpless stranger all others skirt their steps around. How pathetic a fate it is to drink a half glass’ empathy.

So full is his own serving that, once they’ve stood and the produce has been put to rest, dirt brushed from his khaki knees, he’s one rotation round the Earth of refusal to the complementary bushel of strawberries thrust out to him.

“You must! A sweet young man deserves only my best!” And, now, how ever could a sweet young man disagree? His scan over the offering taps the idea of just who’ll appreciate these tenfold more, and then certainly, he has no qualms with reaching out to accept them.

And then, he hears it.

_Wonder if she’d still give you these strawberries if she knew you killed her son._

His fingers clench so tightly, the plastic nearly crumbles just as well as his legs feel they will. Paper, paper white all to the core- and must it be so conspicuous a shade, too, with the woman’s concern painting over top him. He’s drawn from daze enough to grasp the gift toward him in one quick yank, hardly noting the woman’s surprise with his still dizzied eyes. It’s awfully, awfully warm today.

“Thank you- I’ve really got to be going now,” he thinks he says next. “I just remembered, I...I have to… I’ve got to go.”

Several blinks batter him in the process of his turn away, two strides forth before again is he stopped by his morals and the barking of his name. “Light, my boy, ah,” the man calls out with his same care. A bundle of flawlessly carmine apples push forth in his hands. “Would you give these to your mother for me? I promised her I’d let her know when the Fujis were ripe.”

He stares at the apples with his nape still pinched in gelid sweat. His bottom lip shakes as his tongue coasts along it.

“I-” Pupils darts across the fields of his eyes. “I’m really in a rush. Please, forgive me.”

The sidewalk is his liberation right into hell long ahead. He does not glance back at the vendor stands out of all his current aches, addressed both in one lick up the bend of his earlobe.

_That was awfully rude of you, Light. That isn’t like you at all. Or is it?_

Where from it follows after laughter that sounds of crunching glass shards in the deepest crushing maw. Pulled forward cast his shoulders, trudging through the agony of how swiftly his heartbeat drums.

Someone is following him. Someone is whispering heinous filth against his ears.

Tightly, his shoes clack another measure, and his eyes pong over one shoulder before he ducks himself off against a corner alleyway. Back to the wall, he flattens, stills, waits.

His mouth could burn hearth wood with a single lick. As soon as he’s stable as equilibrium will grant, another glance for safety tosses him back into the mingling crowd roaming the sidewalk this morning. Bleed in among everyone, that’s it. Conceal.

It works for a handful of steps. Falling so concerned with the life gone on behind himself, eyes locked more there than here, turns he and a stranger close as sin within seconds, and the second man chokes on shock as he glances up from his cell phone screen, pinches the brim of his hat to keep it from slipping off after they the two have collided. Light stumbles just a touch. The strawberries jostle in their container against his churning stomach.

“Oh- I,” he gasps, breathless, “I’m sorry-”

_Don’t bother apologizing. You made him hang himself with his own bedsheets all because of a little armed robbery conviction._

If the stranger thinks Light looks rather odd with his eyeballs blowing an inch from his face, there is no indication made, and he carries on his way with a quick dipped nod and leaves the other bone frozen in his stance.

Voices in his head. Voices in his head.

His mind is swimming a hundred laps in his skull that tilts loosely into one trembling palm raised to catch it. Still his eyes rest vast, teeth bared with ache.

All at once, he demands himself civil, shaking his head and forcing it straight. Either leg strikes out to carry him. One by one. Stiff and untouched, yet picking up haste on the path. Because he’s so perilously exhausted, it seems, that he’s hearing things now, and must get home and fall face first unto his sheets.

It’s a falsehood. He knows it.

This past string of killings has kept him up well past appropriate for weeks on end. His mother had already commented once on how it was getting harder to tell him apart from the only person alive with darker under eye circles than him lately. But they’ll have a breakthrough soon enough- no investigation with a Yagami on the case will ever be set aside unsolved.

Such a mantra in mind makes it tough on all his muscles to bring him opposite intent. He’d been on his way to the station to check in, settle in, delve in. He’d been on his way to justice, but rather now is every last step a hundred kilograms dragged up every last stair, plodding, pleading, convincing himself with the passing seconds that he’s tired, he’s most definitely tired. Yawn, come on now, thinks it over in his mind _yawn yawn yawn yawn-_ ah, yes, there it is, his jaw expands around one. So he must be tired. That’s it.

The front entry is his red carpet, once the door creeps its way open enough for his head to poke in, survey for no good reason, peel in and latch the locks behind his back. The television murmurs the latest news stories. Across the room, a picture frame sits tilted upon its axis enough of a centimeter to matter to him. Light purses his mouth. One finger tips it righted, follows the scattered books all across the living room coffee table into neat array on his way past, too, and with the tip of one shoe tosses the shirt rumbled up on the floor into his hand, lays it over the arm of one chair.

At the very least, Light appreciates the structure of coming home _every_ day to what he calls a disaster (to what the mess maker calls ‘the working from home aesthetic’). It’s nicer than usual, having been only gone an hour at most today before turning back. In his mind, that spins another wonder, how he’ll excuse his presence home again to the other occupant soon to spot him.

Soon, he thinks, stepping against the hardwood of their kitchen where he’s bent up in a seat at the table, computer screen tanning his lean face and grid paper laid in a messy map before the keys.

Soon, he thinks, standing directly beside him, yet no move comes to pull his thumbnail from his front teeth or his attention from the spreadsheets taunting him.

Soon, he thinks, dropping the strawberries to the dining table. He watches him blink with labor, tilting a hand up toward the container to pinch one berry out with the forefinger and thumb. It vanishes all the way to the stem in one swift bite.

“Oh,” comes with it, mouth stuffed and slurring. “You’re home.”

Light, without meeting his eye, bends idly at the waist, one hand cupped at the table’s edge whilst the other sweeps crumbs into it. “Yeah, I decided not to go in today. Yet you’ve already managed to trash the place. Look at all these crumbs- jeez, L, did you have an entire cake for breakfast?”

The corner trash accepts the handful, sliding next to hush the faucet over his fingertips. Stares burn against his back a mile long.

“Are you...sick?” His palms tango. Just thinly is the question lined in concern, he can detect, though more so is he willed into a sigh from the nose as he tips the sink handle silent.

“Would you take care of me if I was?” Light asks.

“That depends on whether you’re infectious or contagious,” L responds.

Hands wiping through a towel, Light lets the exchange simmer a bit, then turns to him with one palm perched to his hip. Amusement may dare his face. “And my family wonders why we went to the town hall instead of having a ceremony.”

Strawberry tucked in his front teeth, L stretches fingers over his paperwork to clack across the keyboard.

His eyes sting as they roll to the heavens. He swivels his belted hips around the bend of the table, and figures he’d ought to catch to that sleep he’s chased home. A sigh and a stretch, way made toward the bedroom he’s sure to find with half the comforters tucked and pristine while the second side rivals a whirlwind, yet in his tracks he finds himself solid. Passing the open wall toward more the living room has snapped his neck back for a sharper glance at the television screen, and he swears to every God he’s seen that face, and he swears to no one at all that hiding a revolver underneath a wide brimmed hat is something he’d never considered, and the armed robbery attempted with it just three streets away would have been successful had he not been so near the local police station. Light blinks. He’d gotten no call on that arrest. His mouth surely hangs open all the same.

_You think that’s good,_ assaults his either eardrum, _go ahead and kiss your husband, you’ll love to find out what you did to him, too._

“Be _quiet,”_ crushes past enamel.

Behind him, there’s a tilt. “Light?”

His breath catches at the peak of his chest as he urges himself to turn backward. “Huh-? Oh, right.” Where the throb persists, he shakes his head. “I think I actually am getting a cold. Something feels... _off,_ today.”

L hums behind his tongue, and Light dually marks the length of which he’s eyed before they relieve him to reflect screen light again. “I’ll have Watari make you some tea.”

This breath is thinner now, floats fingers away from his forehead to straighten forth, walk the line of the kitchen with the finest humor finding him. “That’s alright, I think I’ll just get some rest.”

His touch is cashmere against the breath of L’s hair, neck to shoulder, and he dips at the waist to make believe nothing is rotten about today, and today this kiss tastes of strawberries. His lids part, for the boldness of the flavor to find his gaze meeting pure red, forefinger and thumb pinching a four leaved stem.

“I’d rather not catch anything,” L drawls, keeping the strawberry pressed to the pucker of Light’s mouth, who blinks, and with only meager chagrin nips the end off into chewing.

The middle of their dead cold California king is the most delicious place to sink face first into. His fist yanks the leather from its loops behind him, belt buckle clinking as his fingers slowly, slowly unhinge, to allow it to drop to the floor.

He exhales himself an inch thin.

Then, he hears humming.

Then singing.

Then laughing.

_The masses cheering, Kira...Kira...Don’t know he’s Light Yagami-_

“Be quiet,” curls against his pillow. “Be _quiet.”_

_Kira...Kira...your brand new name-_

“I don’t want to hear it anymore.” His knuckles swat the pillows before him into better comfort, and he relaxes best as he might. “I’m delusional. I’m probably dehydrated. I need to rest.”

_He makes a list of people, who’s names he’ll write down, and-_

“We exchanged promises of revolution in the expanding darkness,” he spouts suddenly out, muffled by bedding still. Something he’d heard on the radio another morning drive. Hardly is singing so much for blithe as he does on those rides into work with the sunroof open, as now he’s desperate to drown out the nightmares that cling to his rims. “I loved you, so the flower of evil sprouted-”

_Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?_

“I won't let anyone interfere with everything to come that is in the future-!”

_Light, can’t you see how pitiful you look now? Don’t you wonder what happened?_ His throat scrapes with frosted glass. In that watery mind, the voice coughs mockery in its laughs. _Go ahead, sleep all you want. I’ll still be here when you wake up, and every moment afterward._

The breeze laps his flesh, though the windows are closed, though it was warm today, and _is,_  beneath the blankets he twists within surfs cold. How pitiful, pitiful he looks now, shivering like a dog washed to shore through every last cell. Sick, dehydrated, oh, he’s certain, feverish and hallucinatory, grasping at what his fingertips phase right through.

Light does not know if he sleeps. Light does not know where his existence lies.

(And were he venting the wet of his soul out for who he sleeps beside, there’d be the flick of book page, hardly a glance, and he’d hear dragged out in murmur how handsomely dramatic he is).

Light does not know if he sleeps. But he knows when he wakes, it is to the cool tempt of knuckles fawning over his forehead. Cool, shockingly so, a dive unto the skater’s pond, and at the same time tugged free to the surface. That of consciousness, that of diamonds and ash.

His eyes flutter back against the real world again, up to where there’s that hand lain beneath his bangs, a gaze that pours syrup atop him.

“I thought that I should check on you,” he hears L mumble, and the hand flips to smooth back his hair, one stroke, soft, two, three. “It’s been a few hours now.”

Weight pins fatigue in him in several slow blinks. A few hours. He’s felt it only thirty seconds, though he supposes he’s on his back now, and that takes quite the effort of turning and tossing through rest. The blankets choke his shins with their tourniquet tautness. It’s been a while.

The hand removes from his hair, lets it fall back lush, if only to accept the one outstretched from Light’s side, a weary lift of his palm high. L takes it in both his own, massages ever idly the tendons inside before it presses a soft moment to his gaunt cheek. They’re serene in that second, touching in the softest of ways, and the silver band on his third finger is no colder than the skin it presses gainst here; again, for tranquility’s sake, his hand is pulled back into the pair that cradles it, moved forward in one gentle motion to lay flat against the pound in L’s left side chest.

Light tilts his cheek against the pillowcase, allowing himself the length of a tired simper before all at once its peeled off, one harsh yank of a bandage from his skin, to the laughter that grates along his inner ears.

_Yeah, right there. That’s where you got him,_ the voice trills. _Right in the heart._

January the twenty eighth is sweltering this year.


	2. Chapter 2

“Three more people said they saw that same black, winged figure going across the sky, all in the same area and around the same time.” Papers shift in his hands’ manilla. There’s a phone or two ringing themselves mad around the office desks. Up ahead of them all, an elder of experience stands as he reads off the report, closes the folder, looks to their superior stood beside him for assurance that comes in a nod. “That can’t be a coincidence. I don’t think we can write these off as hallucinations anymore, Chief.”

The tile reflects either squared toe of his oxfords. Hands clasped behind his back, face solid through the lenses that display rows of police station cubicles down the room. One top right corner over, his closest heir forces a bite of attention much too large to chew into his mouth, twitches only slightly at the skin of his nape as he listens on to his father’s coming soliloquy. “You’re most likely correct, Aizawa, but it just doesn’t make much sense,” it goes. “How could there possibly be that kind of entity in the real world? And why do these witnesses all believe it relates to the recent string of murders?”

Across his face, Aizawa’s mouth is gruff and taut, peering directly ahead without sugar. “They’re saying it’s a Shinigami. That’s why so many criminals have been mysteriously dying of heart attacks- the gods of death are delivering retribution.”

“That’s preposterous,” Souichirou cuffs. His stare is broken to shake his head away, and it is seen fit there for the next orator to rise.

“Chief, I know it sounds crazy, but we’re really stumped on this case lately. It can’t hurt to consider every possibility.”

“I hate to admit it,” mumbles from Aizawa as he scans again over the printed reports, “but I think Matsuda’s right. What other choice do we have?”

“Well,” remarks from a desk over, before their chief has the chance to weigh any of it. Focus fades Mogi’s way, to the papers in pristine order along his desk, to he in his spot and the suggestion hooked on his bottom lip. “There’s always your son-in-law.”

Eyes fallen his way move to themselves a moment of bottomless thought, and the trio stood like suited mannequins at the front of the cold white room slice every morsel of attention to the seat of the top corner right. Ever slight, as one does in the new heat of stares pinning, Light lifts from one perched fist a glance for them, a blinking one, a settling purse of the mouth.

“Oh...” Shoulders first, he leans back against his chair. “L doesn’t usually like to work with the police. He only takes on cases that interest him.” In honesty, Light’s almost embarrassed to have such a silent question as this one placed upon his shoulders, and to have to explain now for any ears to prick upon the more intimate details of his outside life- it’s weird, it’s nobody’s business. Quite frankly, quite lately, he’s felt more and more possessive over his personal space. With one ending glance, he sighs his shoulders into a shrug. “If you’re going to try to work with him, all I have to say is good luck.”

“You’ve really got the advantage, Light,” stirs from Matsuda’s smile. “Your dad is the police chief, and you’re married to the greatest detective in the world. No wonder you’re so good at solving cases, it’s all you ever get to hear about outside work.”

 _Or it just takes a murderer to solve a murder,_ zips like a botfly through his head.

His fingers squeeze harder on the fabric of his slacks.

Souichirou offers his first sliver of thought to cut through the mess simmering, clears his throat and relays, “While I agree having L’s insight on this case would be a major aid, we cannot force his hand.” His own pricks up between his glasses before folding back behind himself. “I cannot say I won’t mention the idea when he and Light come over for dinner this Sunday, though.”

“ _Dad…”_ Light’s hand massages the heat singeing his cheekbones, eyelids. There’s laughter in his brain. He drops the shield of fingers to blare his newfound glare.

“Oh, Light,” ricochets in return. Swift as speed the dark of his face falls away, though his father nods the most subtle apology still. “I didn’t intend to upset you-”

“It’s alright.” He’s right and proper in his spot. His throat clears against itself. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to act so serious. Lately I’ve just been…”

The trail leaks away to nothing. A shake of the head, relaxes what he can of himself back. “Let’s look further into those witness reports.”

His father and subordinates share passing looks.

He’s at the water cooler later in the afternoon when a shadow sweeps the tile beside him.

“Hey, Light-” Ripples form over the surface in the paper cup his hand dwarfs. Stiffness, that’s his shade all over, even so as he tilts himself, moving to glance over the new presence. He’s to flirt his gaze downward once he’s swiveled, and there’s no face to face him but rather a sharp bow at the waist. “I’m sorry, I wouldn’t have brought up L if I knew you two were having problems. Please, accept my sincerest apologies!”

Mogi straightens from his bow. Light blinks.

There’s laughter in his brain.


	3. Chapter 3

It’s January thirty-fourth- God, no, what’s he saying now? It’s the third of February by the time he’s able to get a full night of sleep.

The room is indigo with quiet. Wool soft is the sweater he’d worn the work the day before, slack button marking an indent just below his navel from the weight his body has pressed against it the past hours. Hours, or minutes or days or seconds or years. Hell if he could tell. But he knows, as he pushes his arms against the couch cushions to sit righted, that his head hurts, that the television in the corner is humming a music station, that the cable box beneath it lilts three:twenty-one ante meridiem. He relies on touch to feel the buttons of the remote placed to the coffee table. Silence clicks against the room, and he rises on legs that desperately whine to be stretched, rises and walks toward the divide of carpet to hardwood and from there follows the noise behind his ajar bedroom door. His fingers curl around it, nose poking inside for sight, that of another lain to his side of the bed, one leg bent at the knee and the only poured out straight, back toward the door, voice hush yet gnawing.

When Light approaches, moonlight reflects off the white of the eyes that turn to him. L does not blink. The fatigue crawling his skin is glaring.

“Call me again tomorrow,” he murmurs into the cellphone on his cheek, then claps it shut to rest on the nightstand. So always it’s below ten in here, since L’s control over the thermostat will never bid it any warmer (despite the constant argument that twenty two degrees is _perfect_ sleeping temperature), though Light finds himself reluctant to burrow for the covers. They tantalize him, sure, the luxurious threads and pale stretch of arms extending now to beckon him- and L looks so faultlessly stupid with his arms outstretched as to motion for his warmth, face unaltered from deadpan, all little aspects Light’s adored for a lifetime yet cannot bring himself to rush toward in this bleeding moment. The touch of them both together will haunt him. But- he shakes himself sturdy. One step tempts the space ahead, and no strife, so another goes on until he’s sat himself on the opposite edge of the mattress and a tug on the back of his shirt lures him to laying his hair to the other’s chest. Hands clasped atop his stomach, Light spins a sigh, allowing his eyes to feather shut against the rhythm of L’s breaths.

“I don’t remember falling asleep out there,” he admits, and L tells him, in lush, “I went to check on the kettle. You were passed out on the sofa by the time I returned.”

Memory begins to piece itself together. “That’s right,” Light says. “I never did get my cocoa.”

“Or dinner,” reminds behind him. Fingers coax their way through the tresses around his ear. “Ten hours of sleep is enough energy to go make French toast.”

Shaking away the touches, he snorts derision, humored, and sits up again. “I could sleep twenty hours a night and still not be able to keep up with all your demands,” he says as he pushes himself to standing. The closet door on the bed’s second side is faced, slid open to gaze across hangers upon hangers of blazers and exorbitant fabrics, never bothering with the wrinkled piles of half inside-out jeans strewn across the closet floor whilst he reaches to tug open the drawer built into the wood of the wall. He’s got his sweater and undershirt pulled off, still tangled overhead in his crossed arms, standing with the moon on his bare back from the windows over way, pants taut to the rest of him and skin a honey gold to rival the cold presses of pale hands on his waist. Light flinches, though the interior of his flesh argues he relax, nothing to worry over, nothing to fear. L reaches to touch his abdomen, his chest, within centimeters of making him shiver before Light nudges himself freed of the wrap around him. “You’re like a teenage boy sometimes,” he smirks. “I can’t even get dressed without you all over me.”

From the length of his voice, L is rested back against the pillows again, even and pleased. “I’d be more adamant if I weren’t wasting away over here. Starvation only takes a month to kill a man, Light.”

Cotton tee pulled atop him, he sweeps the zipper down his pants. How had it been put- handsomely dramatic? Yes, that’s his L. He’s close to wearing a sugar spun smile before metal slaps his teeth.

_Starvation takes a month, but you only took forty seconds-_

“Hm? ...What’s wrong?”

It comes after he’s peeled his pants down the thighs and his knees buckle there, catching himself with a palm slapped to the closet trim. He hunches forward to breathe depthless retractions, forces himself to stand tall against the color of apprehension.

He doesn’t face L. He can’t.

“I’m fine,” assures his best retail worker voice. There should be more, has to be, but his lips are silent against the motion of swapping slacks for joggers.

“I have to use the bathroom.” A solid ten count is all he’s needed to collect himself in this dark cold room, enough to turn around and offer a smile that nearly asks _paper or plastic._ “I’ll make you breakfast afterward.”

“...No need,” surprises his expression flat again. L shifts his calves against the sheets. “Just come to bed.”

Air sips into his mouth, holds it, nods. He’s soft in every step down the hall to curve himself with a flick of the bathroom lightswitch up.

In immediacy, he’s on his hands leant against the sink porcelain, forearms shaking with the effort to support his shoulders.

“ _What,”_ blows hard against his grit teeth, “do you want? Why won’t it _stop?”_

The back of his skull pulsates. Brunette hangs in curtains around his face, tight and wrong, holding tougher to the sink lip when no response meets his pleas. Harsh breaths echo in the room around him, so much so as his shouts. “I know I’m not crazy. It’s got to be something else. If you’re here to make my life a living hell, then at least have the courtesy to tell me what’s going on. Answer me, damn it.” A hand forms a fist to _crash_ to the countertop. “ _Answer me!”_

Silence. The faucet loses one drip. _Plink._

And then comes the laughter. But it’s enough to cup his chin into a tip higher, widen his eyes beyond their bounds, because it’s not the same rusty, mouthfuls of broken window, but a sweet peach bite that drips its juices all the way to the elbow, a summer Sunday, a tooth chipped on the core not expected, perhaps; Light snaps his gaze up into the mirror, because the laughter in his head isn’t what he’s had to grow accustomed to the past week, but an all new sound, an all new sound he’s heard in every wind from him his whole long life, the striking noise of his own cackling coughs that grow from breaths, closed-mouth humming, gasps for air that carry the screaming laughter of his own lungs. His reflection trembles. Nothing more than a split second frame- he swears to every God it’s true, he’s seen it there in the mirror, the blink of a mile wide smirk curled across his face, twilight streaked over his eyes that flash lambent fire just long enough to taste.

His hands grip the sink and shake with effort, with hysteria, with disorder.

Silence. The faucet does not drip. _Plink._


	4. Chapter 4

It smells of oyakodon and snow days in this house.

But he isn’t there.

He’s sitting in the same dining chair he’d watched himself grow up in, holding two chopsticks in one hand while the other pedestals his face, but he isn’t there. He’s at the station after waking at three:twenty-one, tapping his fingers on the desk as he pretends to care about the woman who’d had her groceries stolen from her in a JUSCO parking lot, all the while repeating the same noises through his brain. The same grating, wringing noises. He’s not here, with his mother and father across from him, the yellow papered walls the he’s known the last twenty years, Sachiko warbling off sweetness and some chatter about the new home goods kiosk in the mall where she’d picked up this porcelain set- he thinks the question of it had been mumbled from just beside him, after she’d first offered for her years of experience a white dish of maple syrup, but he isn’t certain, because he wasn’t there for the exchange, and he isn’t here now. He’s walking down the sidewalk pavement, the last evening’s snow powdered atop the curb-parked cars, wondering if the demand for produce is enough to keep the stands open on Sunday mornings. And he’s not one hundred percent certain if it’s just been an exception made for him and his classic charm, but he’d been allowed entry once the man’s broom bristles had stopped at the sight of him, and he’d been squinted and grinned at and a bowl of ripe Fuji apples sits neatly in the fruit bowl on his parents’ kitchen counter. Apology had come enough for swift kindness, too, and he’d learned without trying as hard as he’d planned that Shibuimaru isn’t in today, but the message that his husband loved her strawberries will certainly be passed on. And the woman in the JUSCO lot hadn’t been attended to nearly so much as any other day, because his computer screen had been busy chewing on the police reports for Shibuimaru Takuo, most recently convicted on charges of sexual assault, and even more recently the victim of an accidental hit and run by a semi truck. Light isn’t at dinner with his parents and their sons, he’s at the scene of the crime, watching the night go on through the glass of a tall window pane, listing off a dozen different kanji in his head for God knows what reason.

“Light,” bats his eyelids together, and he supposes it’s time he return to real life if his absence has been noted enough to touch three sets of eyes upon him. He lifts away from his perched fist, glancing over his audience a moment before setting focus for who’s called him down. L peers at him with no color. There’s syrup on his finger when it lifts to gesture at him. “Your nose is running.”

Across from him, his mother tuts a sympathetic pucker and reaches to proffer her napkin forward, but faster is his denial, tucking his searing face behind a forearm as he sniffs, shakes, settles himself with an exhale.

“I’m sorry, I- I’m alright, it must be the heat,” explains every symptom he’s had the last week, and Sachiko’s folding her napkin back in on itself as she coos, “It’s okay, dear. How are you feeling? Your father said you’ve been sick lately. I wouldn’t worry if he hadn’t said you missed work over it,” she says, and with all-knowing temper in the curve of her lips, “Neither of you know how to take a break. It’s no wonder you got sick.”

“It’s hard to take a break when you’re responsible for the whole country’s safety,” he smiles back, drops his eyes to the bowl before himself, mixing his utensils around through its sitting cold. Something blacker lays in his chest. Something. His lips fall so tightly together, the skin could chap itself there. He glances upward. “Right, Dad?”

Skill. Attention sweeps away from him to instead walk along his father’s swallow, polite, his nod of certainty. “I agree. Especially with these recent murders…” Tension overcomes his expression. “That brings up something I’ve been meaning to ask you, L. Would it be lawful of me to ask your opinion on this case?”

The wicker of his seat murmurs with the shift of his feet against it, crouched and messy there, spoon of egg and rice filling his mouth as the spotlight swivels upon him. Eyes wide with no interest, the spoon pulls gradually out, leaves his mouth stuffed to speak around. “Mm. What case?”

Souichirou seems to balk a touch, the old friend who’d been asked _uh, who are you?_ on the sidewalk street- but he catches himself, goes along with explaining as much as he’s allowed to while L chews, rests pupils to the ceiling and finger to his chin.

“Well,” is trailed by a swallow to clear his voice, “if you want my opinion, I believe your first mistake was taking on a case you can’t solve on your own.” Where his father winces, Light wishes to groan into the palm he rests his face in. One back and forth of his head, pulls his face down with that hand that rests now to his jawline, watching, wondering. L tips the porcelain to drizzle more syrup over his bowl. “The police just aren’t equipped to handle something as... _vast_ as this. My suggestion is to privately investigate any leads you have. Don’t consider a single detail insignificant.”

“I understand,” Souichirou nods. Light guesses he’d say the same had L told him to kneel down and spit shine his sneakers- there’s occasions upon which he wonders between he and L who’s got the most respect from his father, but then he’ll recall the first time he’d come home and introduced his boyfriend over morning tea, and Souichirou had all but blessed him with a rosary in hand, and decides to quit pondering it. “But,” trips him into focus again, opposition as gentle as can fall, “I was wondering if you’d have any interest investigating this yourself. Some of the men on the force were talking, and we agreed your intellect is just what it may take to solve this all.”

Yes, Light thinks, hit him right in the ego, stroke it dry if anything’s wanted of him. Calling him the most adroit parallel parker had sent Light to work the next morning with a delectable ache in his lower back. Cater to him in every sense, and L Lawliet is water in the palms.

“Yes, well,” that water ripples. “To be perfectly honest, Yagami-san, I’m not sure I have much interest in another murder case.”

“L,” Light at last breaks in. His muscles sit stern. “It shouldn’t matter how interested you are in it. A dozen people have already died- and counting, if we don’t take action quickly.” Across the short space that sunders them, their eyes lock, Light’s shining with the darkest shade of justice ever palpable. His voice is soft, yet thick with honor, vigor. “Doesn’t that mean something to you?”

The moment is quiet. And then the bastard shrugs.

Light only swells up a second’s breath before his fist is wound back behind him, one L is swift enough to catch in a palm; the silverware clatters in a bump beneath the table, bringing his knee forth to knock the wind from Light’s ribs. A short _oof_ from him, and his mother’s chair is scraping the tile beneath it. “You two-! Don’t start with this again!”

A hand rests to one hip whilst the other points out to reproach them. The front of L’s shirt is clenched in Light’s grasp, though they both pause solid there to turn glances for Sachiko. In all her five-foot-two glory she’s more stern than possibly conjurable by the policeman sitting beside her, from the others’ perspectives, gleaming a _look_ to them both that orders them release each other and play nice from there on. She walks her eyes along them another moment before turning for the counter, and when she returns it is with a silver tray in her hold. It places to the middle of the tablecloth. “Only good boys get cake. Now are you going to behave, or am I going to have to throw this whole thing away?”

“We’ll behave,” L assures her, leaning his nose as forward as far as can go without toppling him over. Light brushes the wrinkles from his shirt, sitting straight again to offer her a finite nodding.

The knife slicing through frosting at the very same time slices the tension from the air. L is weightless to collect the plate set before him, one only second to Souichirou, and comes third a piece for Light to peer at. His insides turn their nose up at it. Exterior side up, Light forces himself a bite.

“I’m assuming there’s more information you’re prohibited from telling me,” the mouthful of cake beside him slurs. Light glances over to a half empty plate, and life in his dark irises. “If that’s the case, and if my input is so crucial...I’ll see what I can do to assist you.”

Sachiko, standing still, beams gold toward him, moves to rest a hand to her husband’s shoulder- her husband, a man of composure, taken now to a broad grin Light sees so rarely, and can deduce now results from more than the agreement itself. Though, somewhere, he cannot place blame. He can recall feeling the very same sense of vertiginous zeal when he’d learned he’d be working alongside the world’s most remarkable detective on a case now four years solved. To his right he glances now, to the world’s most remarkable detective with a ring on his finger and vanilla frosting on his cheek, and wonders where the excitement had ever come from. But he must digress. There’s beauty in that heart, he knows.

Souichirou is close to a thought when no more can be had without including the twist of the front knob, the shuffling sound of snow kicking off boots, the step inside of a lip gloss simper that dies quickly away to find two extra gazes turned toward her.

“Oh, jeez, I didn’t miss your birthday dinner, did I?” His sister’s manicured fingers go to wind the pink scarf from its twist, resting either half at each shoulder as she glides inside.

“No. But you did miss your curfew,” Souichirou censures, though a kiss to his cheek and a sweetened, “Hi, Daddy,” slaps him back to melted. Sachiko tuts her teeth.

Light’s close to remarking on how playing cute never got him out of punishments at twenty years old, but the humor’s thieved away like a mat from beneath his feet to wisping flame on the skin.

_It’s nice to see her up and walking again. A junior at university now, right? Surprised she made it that long._

Light’s blinking himself back alive in time enough to catch his sister with her arms around L’s stiff shoulders, just on the end of saying how long it’s been since she’s seen him last, and L reaches one hand up to clasp hers as she pulls away. Sayu smiles and squeezes his fingers before letting go to bounce over again toward her parents. In a bow, “I didn’t mean to be out so late, it’s just that me and Misa saw this guy at the mall who looked _just_ like Ryūga Hideki- wouldn’t you be a little late if you saw Ryūga Hideki in line at the soft pretzel place, too? Well, it turns out it wasn’t _actually_ him, but-”

“Sayu,” Sachiko shakes her head, blustering a laugh as Souichirou allows, “Just let us know next time, honey.”

Light could remark that he was never _honey_ when he was twenty years old. But he thinks if he opens his mouth, all that will come out is half digested oyakodon.

The doors of the car clip shut in tune. Ten and two. Rigid, right. He waits to hear the click of the seatbelt beside him before shifting into reverse.

“I suppose it won’t be long before you kill me now,” L says to him once they’re down the darkened road. “I know you’re Kira.”

“Huh- What?” Light dares to breathe, eyebrows tipping high and heart pinning still.

With a glance popped atop him, then back to the windshield ahead, L repeats, “I said, I suppose it won’t be so terrible working with your father’s team. I know you’re capable.”

The dizzy flashes in his mind settle together, insisting the wheel away from any possible swerve. “Oh, right.” His chest relaxes. “...I’m glad to have you working with us. It’ll make things a lot easier.”

“Yes,” he murmurs. The night evolves beyond their windows. Dark chill. “It was very kind of me to accept your father’s offer. I expect substantial pampering when we get home.”

At last, he begins to feel the tingles of lax, loosening his white grip, breathing the most subtle chortle. “Of course, princess.”

 _You tease him, but is it truly out of love? Don’t you just want to throttle the guy sometimes?_ The car shifts around a dent in the road. Tight. _When he shrugged at you like that, huh, or when he asks you to cook for him at three AM, don’t you just want to kill him? Go on, don’t you?_

“I love you,” Light avows against the night. “More than anything.”

If he’s taken aback, L makes no motion for it, just a blink tossed for him quick. “Would you like my black card?”

Light’s face pulls taut. “No.”

“Oh,” L says. “Are you dying?”

“...No.”

“Hm.” His face twists strictly for the passenger window, one knee brought up to hug to his chest. Subtleties, softness. “Then I love you, as well.”

Cackling casts heat inside his skull. _He doesn’t even believe you when you say it. Face it, Light, you’re a bomb waiting to go off. It’s all a game. A game._

Ten and two. Light swallows a hard nothing.

He’s never lost a game in his life, and he won’t start now.


	5. Chapter 5

_ Aren’t you tired of this? The same thing everyday, go to work, come home, go to bed, go to work.  _

“I think if we compare these two witness accounts with the times of the last murder, we’ll be able to pinpoint a location,” he says to the policemen looming around his desk.

 

_ The Light I knew would never settle for such a boring life. _

“You can’t have ice cream for dinner again. Come on, let’s order in,” he says to his husband as he unknots his necktie.

 

_ It’s getting a little sad watching you, you know. _

“Then close your eyes,” he says.


	6. Chapter 6

Matsuda had pointed out this morning, with a laugh, that Light’s socks were two different colors. “I woke up late, too. The Baystars game went three extra innings last night.” And he’d laughed again, running fingers through the back of his hair. “And then my grandma insisted I eat the special pancakes she made me. I think she’s gonna do that every Valentine’s Day until I’m a hundred. Oh, hey, you guys must have plans for tonight, right? It must be awesome to actually have...well, you know, a valentine besides your grandmother.”

They must have plans for tonight. They _must._

Light always does wonders with his impromptu perfection. Before he’s even got his laces undone, he’s trekked straight for the kitchen cupboards, bowls clacking, flour and sugar and measuring cups, such a flawless cacophony that a shadow can’t help but trail behind.

Closely behind- he can feel his lungs expelling, can see his curious reflection in the stovetop, can hear the finger coasting his lips when he moves them to ask, “What’re you up to now?”

Beside that darkened mirror, Light’s smirk lengthens. His hands fall away from pillaging the cabinets to turn himself around. “It’s a secret. Just be patient.”

L’s head tilts far enough to nearly pull him off his axis. “You do realize both of those statements contradict my entire livelihood, don’t you?”

That smirk is hummed against, and those hands are delicate in pulling their chests as one. Lips plant to the heat of L’s neck. Light feels him fidget in his hold.

“I have something important to ask you,” he says into his warmth, moves to lock their eyes, run a palm up his back. “L...will you be my valentine?”

How simply schoolyard of him. He’s of delightful allure. “Oh,” is all L replies, “I thought you were going to propose.”

Light peers at him long enough to read the bemusement on his lips, then kisses it right off with his own, kisses, kisses, kisses, until he’s allowed to taste him in the wordless interlude to lust and dawn. Fingers ensnare the deep black of his hair, demanding them closer, closer in every sense, all the way to touch commanding the very opposite; L pulls away from him, his own mouth puckered still, just to look, to peruse, examine.

“Are you alright, Light?”

He blinks, because he’d been certain his facade would be bulletproof, though the hands squeezing his shoulders check off the giveaway. Best as he can, he relaxes the tension of his muscles, nods an assuring solid. “I’m fine...angel.”

Perhaps he’d ought to hold back- the pressure of L’s brow line alerts peculiarity. Back to waist to hips his hands trail before releasing him. Light faces the countertop again. He’s quick to get to work sifting sugar unto a silver cup. “I just want you to know I love you. I guess I don’t say it often enough.”

“Right, I know.” L’s voice is hardly ever so savory soft. “...Banana bread would convince me better, though.”

Light’s mouth quivers as he smiles harder. “You figured me out,” he admires, and reaches for the countertop fruit bowl to pick three bananas off their hook.

He sets diligently to work peeling the first, back broad and straight, reminding himself to keep the stiffness out, careful. Needn’t he so meticulously make a mantra once he’s gifted warmth in the wrap of arms around his waist, the rest of a head atop his shoulder, the flutter of ardor in his chest. L is a quiet lover. A loud, loud, loud hater, but a quiet lover, a gentle lover, a sleeping cat atop the blankets, dusty with sun. If it walked past pure metaphor, he swears he’d feel purrs vibrating gainst his back now.

The room is soft.

Until the floorboard beneath his brain creaks.

_Overcompensating. I like it. What kind of gift says, ‘Sorry for murdering you’ better than some homemade banana bread? Maybe some apple bread. But kudos all the same._

“...You smell nice today,” mumbles muffled into his shirt. Light hasn’t the time to drink its honey.

_Ha- that’s the smell of sweeeet duplicity, angel._

The mixing bowl noshes a raw egg. Light whirs a fork through the batter to bring the wet of it together, sets it aside, lays a naked banana down atop the cutting board.

“I don’t mind working at the station as much as I anticipated,” L says, because his L is a quiet lover and a loud hater and a chatty chatter when silence can be his own, when they’re alone and he’s had things go on today he’d like to be heard. His L can run his mouth, and on a normal day, he adores it (and on a normal night when he’s meant to be sleeping, but instead’s lain beside him and squeezing his face to get him to shut it, he doesn’t so much, but that matters not in the time that is the now). “I quite like your father’s chosen men. The rookie makes me wish shock collars were invented for humans, but he may have potential.”

_Shock collars, huh? Kinky._

“If I’m honest, I don’t see Aizawa’s idea going very far. Catching a criminal requires you to think like one. Just as maniacally...just as cleverly.”

 _Maniacal? Clever? It’s like this guy knows you,_ the voice laughs. _It’s too bad he doesn’t. Not even close. If he did, he’d have high tailed it out of there long before the ‘I do’._

Knife cuts slide through the midst of the second fruit. Loud chops against the polyethylene. Quicker to match his heartbeat. L adjusts the position of his face against him. He hears the exhale through his nose, can sense the close of his lids and all over relax. He slices faster.

 _Hey, Light, you’re awfully quiet tonight. Am I being too hard on you?_ Laughter. _I’m only trying to keep things interesting._

Chop. Sweat traces the top of a brow. He’s frowning to hell and back, tight all over without meaning or not, just hardly catching up to his own breaths in time to make more, slicing so finely, echoing now against the kitchen. The third banana is pulled in place of the finished one. Not a second wasted.

_Come on, Light, give me something. A little Valentine’s Day massacre, pretty please?_

His pulse throbs inside his eardrums. A hundred different feelings in a hundred different ways, the tautening of the arms around his waist in time to the prodding fingernails through his mind, the wind outside and the stifling flame in here, the tremble of his hand as it chips faster and faster away at the-

Clatter. Metal to the countertop. Dripping hecatomb.

 _Oh,_ his head thrums. _That’ll do._

“Light?” The touch around him disbands to glance upward at the silence, grasping it himself once sight can map out the carnage. Light clutches his left index finger in the grip of all his right, both hands still with their quake, face drained to white as he wavers one step back. L glances to the mess that he is, and the mess that is sliced bananas and a bloodied fingertip on the cutting board, and throws a chokehold on action. Light feels the pressure of a hand on his elbow, forcing his hand elevated overhead. “Car,” L tells him. “Now.”

There’s strings controlling him from there. He thinks he hears the oven shut off. He thinks he hears ice. The next he’s capable of seeing outside the blur of stark monochrome, there’s a windshield ahead of him and streetlamps ahead of that still, huddled in the passenger seat of his husband’s horrible Corolla, bound by nothing but fiberglass in every crevice of his body. He dare not move, dare not breathe. L’s a dreadful driver with panic fanning his nape. By the time they’ve blown one stop sign, Light wills his tongue to rattle.

“I’m fine,” he promises. “Just- Just a little cut. Don’t worry.”

A glance pours over him just long enough to know a hand is needed to stick out and press his elbow higher. His knuckles return to choking the wheel, mouth breaking into a hundred yard cringe. “...Idiot.”

That’s how Light is sure he’s loved.

The emergency room doors are blinding.

That’s how he knows he’s loved, too, to an extent, because he doesn’t think L is above leaving an adversary to bleed out on the kitchen tile.

“My husband-” And that right there is the absolute tell, the way L walks up to the front desk nurse and speaks with no hesitation, wherein the L he’s known the past years is flush to hold a conversation with the drive-thru box, yet now has all the care imaginable to go on and say, “My husband needs stitches,” and push him forward by the back. The gauze L had shoved his way on the car ride over gushes through its second side now to darken his opposite hand holding it. The nurse nods in concerned agreement, flicking paper against a clipboard to lay on the desk between them.

“A doctor- Oh, Yagami.” The mahogany of her eyes shines. “You’re Chief Yagami’s son, aren’t you? Your father helped out on an insurance fraud case a few months ago, I remember seeing you. I had no idea you were married…” She says it as though her dream’s been shattered by the alarm clock rhythm. Light almost smiles, though the hand pushing up his elbow and glower attached to it tell him a single nod is all he needs.

The nurse bows to them a swift second. “Ah, excuse me. Yes, a doctor will be with you as soon as possible, please take a seat and fill this out.” She bows again. “I apologize you have to wait at all. The holidays are the busiest time of year. As a police officer, I’m sure you understand.”

“Right,” Light replies, trying his sweetest to sound as though he’s not at all dizzy with sudden onset anemia. He allows himself be led toward the row of waiting chairs, plastic, deathly, sits in one with L beside, knees brought to his chest and clipboard atop. Finger lifted over the head, he scans the paperwork with swimming vision. L chews the tip of the pen between fill-ins.

“What’s your number again- huh, 933...12…”

“639,” he finishes, to which L nods and scribbles on. Light focuses on his inhales.

The room around him is bland, though it’s to be accepted here, blank white walls windows tile glass. Busy, too, the nurse had been right- a man hobbles from the sliding doors, clutching his abdomen as he pleads his case to the front desk. Perhaps an undercooked Valentine’s dinner. Light peels his eyes away to wander the waiting area, gauges just how long he’ll have to sit here with his bicep quaking. A young boy holds ice to his swollen undereye, a graying man sat beside him in complete chagrin. There’s a woman two seats over, pressed against the corner wall in her gaudy synthetic blonde ponytails and fishnets up to nowhere land, knuckles white as she clutches the arm of her chair. Another younger boy, mid teens or so, flits through his cell phone, baseball cap tucked far over his face. The hunched man soon joins the lot, placing himself and his fogged glasses lens in a diagonal seat from the gothy blonde.

It shouldn’t be long now, especially not if the receptionist has the hots for him. He coughs against his creaking smirk.

Swiftly does it wither.

 _You know something, Light, I think I recognize that pretty girl in the corner over there._ The cynical temper in the voice tells Light there’s a million more layers to what it says. _Why don’t you go talk to her? See if she remembers you, too._

“ _No_ ,” he grinds. Curiosity feathers over him, and he’s quick to repair, “Where it says, _does anyone in your household smoke,_ check off _no."_

“...Right,” mutters L, ink stopping null on its deft trails.

One ankle crosses over its pair. What fingers can drum against his right thigh, blinking a leer toward the far corner, pulls himself just as fleetingly away again. Never seen her a day in his life, he wants to tell himself. Drumming turns to clenching.

_Go ahead. You know you can’t stand it._

He keeps himself stern as long as he’s able, yet something, _something,_ fills his brain with sawdust, slaps him, stabs him, presses its thumbs against his throat until he has no choice but to feed the frenzy and turn his chin up toward the left corner wall.

His lungs betray him the moment their eyes meet.

Her face is round with youth. A metal cross sits between her breasts.

She blinks at him, mouth fallen parted, clueless almost, and if he looks close enough, the mascara beneath her hazel eyes is smeared in wet.

Light can do nothing but _stare_ at her.

The woman can do nothing but slap her palms to her ears, and shriek cold bloody murder.

“It’s- It’s happening again- _Please,_ somebody help me, I can’t take it anymore!” Acrylics scrape her skin. Her knees shift up against her stomach. She gasps at life. “Please, _please-_ I can’t take it anymore. Just kill me, I’d rather be dead than this! Kill me! _Kill me!”_

In several glances, Light spots the reception nurse’s alerted gaze, phone lifting off the cradle to rest between her cheek and shoulder. The woman- the pitiful one, she’s hunched in upon herself, hugging her legs, biting the chap of her bottom lip, whimpering every so often one long whistle.

He hardly has time to exchange wondrous glances with the one beside him before there’s a man in a tall white coat, glasses rested to his nose’s tip, sweeping out among them to direct toward the corner. Light doesn’t try to discern whatever words are shared, but within the minute she’s brought to her feet, clutching the sleeve of the doctor that guides her through the hall.

It burns to his very soul that empty, gnawing stare that clings to his flesh all the way to her disappearance around the corner.

“Yagami?” draws his nose toward the receptionist. She offers what can be of a smile his way. “Just down that hall to the left- there’s a doctor available for you now.”

Nodding is a bad decision, just the same as standing so fast as he does; there’s hands to catch him, rub a circle along as his lumbar while he sucks in the time to steady himself. L makes no question of accompaniment. They go together. Evening or morn. Antarctic or blistering.

Only further a wish could ever be for the woman down the hall to cease her screaming.

 

His fingertip resembles vaguely the ridges of the tire swing at the park. Just a single row of black crosshatches. Tiny. Precise. Admirable work, he’s got to think.

The stability has rushed back to him for most of what he has, able to stride the halls on his own with L a pace ahead, fingers clasped around the top corners of the clipboard he’s still hung onto. He pauses, mentions something about returning the paperwork, and Light hears it sure enough to nod him along, yet more pressing comes the peripheral of their halted pose.

An open door. An open curtain. She’s just sitting there, a color far more calm, sitting and breathing against the empty air. An open opportunity.

Nothing stops him with L’s shoulders facing him, and retreating still, enough room for his shift, a glide on heels around the corner bend until he’s _there,_ standing there in the threshold of a familiar stranger’s examining room. Where he’s never left the herringbone of his button up, she’s perched there in a blue cloth gown that exposes the back of her heart-print panties and clasp of the bra. He can see her fingers grip cautiously the edge of the table she sits on. The lift of his breath stumbles her ponytails across her shoulders to glance his way, bated. Stars glimmer in the hue of her stare. Or so he’ll describe it. Very likely, it could be fear. Very likely.

Though, he isn’t certain she’d approach him so willingly; she steps from her place as though a pianist striking the very first note. The proceeding steps harp the melody, a dainty one, slow to grow onward. She balances an arm’s length away, both of her own brought up to clutch before her chest. Silence massages the room between them.

“...Are,” he tempts. “...How are you feeling?”

Violins join the choir. He can hear the way she inhales, never once taking her eyes off of him even once they gush with feeling.

“... _Light,”_ she whispers, and her sprint toward him to fall into his chest is neither accepted nor refuted- there’s no time. No time for anything.

“I-” he trips on, perking a glance in haste over one shoulder. “I have to go. I can’t stay.” Where his step backward pricks her tears again, he grants a weary, “I’m sorry,” before dipping out into the fluorescence of the hallway in which a shadow already lurks. One silent swipe of his arm outward. That’s his ticket.

“Sorry,” spills as though a second skin, over and over, and L doesn’t read at all angered as he does riveted to know every last detail, as so always of him. Riveted. Light pinches the stick of a flat green lollipop. “Saw these in a cup over here.”

Cinch it with a charming smirk- _there,_ incredible. Light’s the victor just as soon as L’s hand extends to accept the offering, skepticism draining from his gaze to bid them both toward the exitway, palm steadying at the small of his back. Comfort, yet all the same can he never again sip the surface of anything but strain, particularly applicable with his final glance over one shoulder, meets the long desperation of leaking wet hazels boring through his heart.  

The night sky kisses him, and there’s no turning back.

Not that he’d ever hope so, never that he’d wish himself away from the clean luxury of their bedding after such a day he’s had- and with L’s breaths gone so soft in ( _by God,_ only so often come more after carrides where they’re alone together, his legs bent up to rest feet on the dashboard and lips moving in silence around CD player pop, and Light will glance over after ten more miles to find him limp) _sleep_ , he’d have to be pure mad to move an inch.

Yet he does, guides his hand through the delicate cowlicks of black in all the places he knows from experience his sweetheart’s too heavy a sleeper to sense, rested to his side in the bed’s close middle, arms outstretched with their bony finger joints Light moves to fidget with now, caresses the ring on his left hand, bleeds with lust that after the longest days, it’s still there, right in place.

(It’s in the front of his teeth on occasion, for veracity’s sake, but Light is always quick to pluck it out and warn about the hazards of a sharp inhale).

The thought swells bemusement. Leave it to his wandering mind to ruin a placid moment.

In all senses.

 _That was supposed to belong to her, you know._ Her. No question. His touches pause on the cool skin they explore. _Being a ladies’ man in the public eye was a lot more convenient than ever actually feeling love._

Keeping his hands to himself now, Light drifts down the river of the voice’s lazy slur, basking, almost, yet knowing that one tip off the raft will melt the flesh from his bones. There’s something to be felt here, regardless, something to be gained if he can spin it all just right.

The sheets crimp beneath him. He tugs the hem of his bottoms higher on the thinning hips as he circles the bed to slip toward the hallway heat. Seventeen steps, same as any other night. He’s bonded to the kitchen then, where white light paints him head to toe, dies off with a shut of the door after he’s selected the bottle in pursuit of.

Cork fibers shred against a thumbnail. Either hand forms the system together, one leading a cascade of Malbec into his favorite coffee mug.

“I want to know more,” he says into the air, and chill clamps him directly at the ankles.


	7. Chapter 7

One hundred thirty eight minutes into the work day, he’s learned that people aren’t nearly as keen as reporting crimes on a Friday. And he’s learned that L can balance thirteen coffee creamers back to back before they give in to gravity.

“Hey, check this out,” someone behind them gleams, glancing over to a laptop computer being spun round to face them in Ukita’s hands. Several lines of code scrawl the screen. “If you press CTRL U, you can see the whole HTML of any website. Isn’t that cool?”

That beam is awaiting something- Light attempts to deliver with his own smile of half heart, though L takes only to turning back forward with dusk written on his face. “Yagami, I think you’re paying your men too much.”

Behind, a gawking scoff spouts out.

Ahead, the chief adjusts his glasses, lips thin as he nods one acknowledgement his way.

Two creamers lay atop one another. The cycle repeats.

He almost finds it insipid enough to think the voice had been right. A boring, boring life on the slow days, yet he can shake the stupid away and tell himself that’s just what he needs right now, after a deep scarlet night and four extra minutes spent this morning redressing his suture wounds with gauze. The finger rests at his desk, plush within its wrapping, flexing the smallest length once it's the focus of his contemplation. His eyes pinch for the tenderness.

They open again to the patter of noise from his hip pocket. Eyes from aside him are quick to perch upon his phone as it slides out into one palm, the flat screen displaying already _UNKNOWN_ across the top with only an option to swipe it answered (all very new advancements to him- L had just recently upgraded the both of them from flip phones for Christmas, but he thinks he’s sure what he’s doing). Vibrations smatter his hand another few seconds before his insides all urge him to rise.

“Excuse me,” he utters to the room’s hush, carries himself around the corner of the office door toward the water cooler and potted fern decorating the short hall. His gait is swift as to pull him far away enough in time still to catch the final ring on a swipe. Breath in the nose, he wonders, “Hello?” and leans against the outside wall with the sunlight in his face.

No distinct reply comes aside from what he can hear of the other end’s breathing, though before he believes himself the next slasher protagonist, a voice perks out.

_“9331.2639,”_ it says, some kind of sickly relief flooding the next steps. _“I had to try a dozen area codes, but I knew I’d find you, Light.”_

Fear flashes his eyes before he’s quick enough to remember the clipboard and the finger held above his head and the boy with an icepack on his eye four seats away. Light blinks. She’s perceptive.

“...Hi,” is all he can figure to say to her. His feet clench within their leather. “I’m sorry, but...I can’t remember your name.”

_“It’s alright. You never had The Eyes.”_ Nonplus tackles his expression, though he’s learned to look past lesser inanity. _“My name is Amane Misa. I want to see you in person again, I think I’ll understand best what you’re going through. Please, could we meet somewhere?”_

Teeth nibble his interior cheek. Please, could they? A hand to his hip straightens him, peels a look along the horizon long ahead of him. Nibble. Nibble. Bite.

The silence of the hallway claps his steps in every one an echo. His pocket is heavier now, same to the color of his conscience, yet there he strides, further and further until he’s back inside the confines of the station office room.

L has meteorologists for eyes, Light knows, and they peer at him as if to predict downpours now. He smiles tightly, leaving fingers against the other’s shoulder.

“It’s pretty slow today. Why don’t I make a coffee run?” Head tilting left, he shows his teeth now with that simper. Just the way he does right before L will call him dangerously handsome, that sort of wrap-around-the-fingers smile. “I figure that’ll liven up everyone’s day. Grande Pink Drink and a birthday cake pop, right, baby?”

The cut of his scrutiny is near lethal.

“...Right,” L says, turned back toward the work in front of him after a thousand pound moment of staring him over.

“Oh, hey, as long as you’re paying, Light-” Matsuda chimes in from the side in jest, and it’s a hard set of minutes before Light’s strolling down the station parking lot with a half dozen coffee orders stamped in his phone’s notes.

He slides himself into the driver’s seat of his car. For the first time, he feels himself far too tall for it, feels his head should soon creak through the rooftop and legs out the hood. His shoulders pinch together as far as will grind as he buckles himself, grips the wheel without a taste. The rear view mirror is dangerously handsome. The ignition is riled by its key. Another minute trails around him. He lifts both hands, caution of the bandage wrappings as he works two fingers to the side, blazer pocket gaining an ounce of silver and leaving his hands to flex in testing newfound freedom. Yes, he must be getting sick.

It’s all strategy is all. One certain to pull him his gains.

The barroom he’d selected is somewhat of a drive, but he can make believe the nearest Starbucks had a line out the door and he hadn’t minded an extra few miles. He’s pleased to see the lot nearly vacant. Day drinking’s a hobby of few, and even less so at places that charge nine hundred yen a glass.

When he steps inside, deeply dim lit and cinnamon just the same as he fits in in his dark suit and preened overall overall- when he steps inside, he’s pleased to see he’s right, she would be there waiting for him already. Women turn feral for a smooth talking man.

“Light,” whispers betwixt the idle orchestra overhead. Otherwise, her desperation is the only sound. He walks over toward her with one nod, where she lifts from her corner stool, skirt pleasantly short, lips a million shades of rogue as they part around greeting.

He says null to her as he sits and she, as expected, mirrors it beside him again. No talking. Not until his lifted finger signals the tender over for him to bid, “Neat scotch, if you don’t mind.” Two glances pin her next, and she stumbles to let out in fragrant sorrow, “Oh- I don’t-”

“Green apple martini,” Light nods, to which the tender twins it before sweeping back along the shelves.

Misa does not protest his force. She’s flushed beneath her hair, palm touching to jawline.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been somewhere this fancy,” she comments, cherry all over. “Well, I go to galas and award shows, but nothing like this. N-”

“We don’t have time for smalltalk,” Light cuts in, halfway anticipating her gasp and slap across his cheek for a storm away, yet she surprises him with rationality, only perking shock a moment that fades obediently into a nod, expression stern, certain. Light wets his mouth. This is the danger, here, testing out his ninety-nine percent theory with that miniscule chance for awe to battle it back, to call him crazy beyond crazy and take him for naught. Light wets his mouth. “...How long have you been hearing the voice?”

Glasses setting before them concerns him nowhere, as he’s calculated enough to know how to lower his tone just exactly when needed. Really, it’s a gift. He raises his drink, sips it absently.

Her shoulders tighten back.

“It just started yesterday,” severs all tension from him. “That’s why I went to the hospital. I- I thought I was going psycho, or something. But then I saw you, and I _knew.”_ Oceans lap in her eyes. “I knew I was going to be alright when I saw you.”

She leans forward enough to place her hand upon his own, one still with the pale of a single stripe to juxtapose the rest of his skin’s honey tan. He retracts all his fingers into a fist beneath her touch.

“Listen to me carefully, Misa,” he demands. His eyes shift the length of the emptiness surrounding them, then flit back to her. “I need you to tell me everything you know. Everything you remember about me, everything your voice has told you. I need to know exactly as much as you do.”

A heavy breath expels from her bobbing head. She lifts again her hand away, sleeve of black lace the decor all down it as it moves to tuck a gold tress behind an ear lined in silver studs. “Okay, well, I don’t want to freak you out, but…” Again, forward, she leans. Never an exhale. “You were Kira. You killed millions.”

Thus far, affirms Light’s grit molars, it matches precisely with what his own head had told him just the night prior, the beg to know more and the wish afterward to have never again another thought. Lessons don’t sit well with him. He beckons Misa to continue.

“Well, other than that, Rem told me I-”

“ _Rem?”_ And his confusion is wiped away, “Oh, that’s my voice’s name. Don’t you know yours?”

Light sits back a moment, lingering in wait until coughed up laughs slap him.

_Took you long enough,_ mocks him silly. _Call me Ryuk._

“...Ryuk,” comes just barely above mouthing it, for the pulse damning his throat prevents better worth. The name stings like poison through his veins.

Misa, if she’s noticed, makes no tell. “Ryuk, huh? How cute.” Her smile is dainty. Light swears he feels his brain cells blush. “Well, Rem told me a lot about you. You’re just as handsome and kind as you used to be. You’ve always been my hero.”

His mouths rests harsh. He knocks back the rest of his drink in one tip.

“Oh, I’m forgetting something,” Misa goes on, glances left to right for certainty’s sake before looking his straight on. “I helped you rid the world of its problems. I was Kira, too. Your disciple. You were my heart, and I was your eyes.”

“My eyes…” murmurs Light, reflection in the polished bar just barely visible in this dim light. “Misa-”

“Oh, by the way, how’s your finger?” She swirls the toothpick in her martini glass. “Your friend in the waiting room didn’t look like he knew very much about medical care. I can take care of you. Anything you need.”

Both hands rested on the bar wood now, Light can only spy her in his peripheral, though that in itself is too much, far too much- but he must wring what he can of this. The music continues above his head. Restless stillness.

“...I’ll be fine, it was just a small cut.” He does not baby her with his tone. He’s clean cut here, never the pleasant stranger to keep shut vulnerability. One blink. He turns to her. “I need more important things from you. I need to know why this is happening to us. We couldn’t both be hallucinating the same exact story.”

“Oh,” drips her sudden dolor. Hardly can she meet his eyes. “Well...from what Rem told me, the day she started talking to me was...it was the same day I died in my last life.”

Shock skins his expression.

_Ouch,_ says his mind. _Talk about a crappy Valentine’s Day._

“Misa…” A fist clenches atop his thigh. His head shakes. “If that’s the case...then that means I died January twenty-eighth. About two weeks before you did.” Focus points her directly in a swivel of himself. “What happened?”

Arms folded against herself, she pouts with dilemma. “Well...Rem, can you tell me?”

Though it’s uncouth, he’s all but in her face as he waits to hear what she’s to say. The space between them hangs wet with suspense. He watches her face change from listening to aghast, utter devastation written over her when she lifts a hand to cover her gaped mouth. “That’s just horrible…” says her shaking breath, eyes falling back to focus to address his gaze. “I was so broken over you dying that I committed suicide. I fell from a rooftop right to my death.” She sighs another spell. “It’s almost… _beautiful_ , in a way. Our love was so strong I couldn’t bear to be without you. My Light…”

His fingers tap against the condensation of his empty glass.

Something. A step into the pitch dark. “...How did I die?”

Hesitation cloaks her. The room is mahogany and blown dry. She lifts one finger, her nail long, sharpened, scarlet, pointing directly to the middle of his forehead.

Light balks.

_Heh. Sorry_ , Ryuk grunts. _It’s kinda my job, you know. And the bullet wounds would have gotten you anyway._

“Rem says I shouldn’t trust you,” pulls him to reality again. Misa plays the role of a helpless little girl arching to teen rebellion to a T. “So maybe she’s lying about the way you died. Maybe she’s lying about everything. Because obviously I can trust you- I can trust you more than anyone I’ve ever known.”

Before he’s to stop it her hand’s reached out again to grasp his left, and though he tries in greed not to capture her gaze, he can see it’s bright with water and wishing.

“I love you, Light,” he’s prayed she wouldn’t. “I don’t care about anything else. As long as I can be with you now, nothing else matters. We were brought together again for a reason.”

He looks to her, body unmoving, unfeeling, untouchable, then glances down the row of the bar, finger lifted deftly.

“Tab please.”


	8. Chapter 8

Blood twists down the sink drain alongside a swig of spit.

The bristles return to his teeth. He’d ought to brush more gently.

It’s the twentieth day of the month now, he counts, almost exactly one round off from when life crept away from the heat of his grasp. Or, well, it may be the nineteenth- seventeenth? If he could tell on his own, then the calender makers would be out of a job, so it’s a good thing that his lack of sleep results in a touch of discomposure. But he knows, after a glance to his watch that leaves his stomach tight, that it’s coming on eight thirty, looking so only to stabilize his argument that, “You slept in today.”

The recipient scratches his navel beneath white cotton as he shuffles into the bathroom. New sunlight reflects off the sink mirror they lock eyes within. His shift out of it turns Light to peer over the inch he’s moved, zipper and fabric shuffling easing the stream into the porcelain beside him. Light watches the abysmal aim that makes a millisecond mess of the toilet rim. Want to throttle him- yes, sometimes, yes.

His answer waits so long, its question nearly slips free. “Yes,” L speaks above the hushing whir of a flush. “I find that working twice as much as usual wears me out. Yet another side effect of being confined to a human form.”

The ceiling white hits his eyes just a moment. “You say the weirdest things sometimes.” Stepping once right, he makes room for the other’s place beside him at the sink, cringes disgust for the exhale that clouds the mirror. “And your breath stinks.”

L’s eyelids seem too heavy for him to support. In a _look_ up toward him, a tested smirk exchanges down, scoffs just as soon as the toothbrush is plucked from his grasp and stuffed inside a foreign mouth.

“We should head in soon,” L muffles around it. “I’m sure we haven’t missed anything of value, _buuut_...we may as well be prompt.”

Light’s two steps into his skin care routine by the time L bends forward, emptying his mouth with a drawled _blaarh._ Light twists the faucet to run the toothpaste down the drain, though null can be done for the smear of it on L’s bottom lip. He’s never found someone so attractive in his life.

“You know,” says Light, once a towel’s scrubbing down his neck, every last cell pristine beneath the bathroom lights, “if you’re really that bored, you don’t have to work on this case anymore. Dad will understand.”

From where he’s crouched on the edge of the shower, loitering for company, L carries a look undecipherable for the better part of a minute. He stands in its midst, head as high as his natural posture allows.

“To concede is worse than to lose,” he affirms. “There’s a solution to everything. I’ll just have to work harder to find it.” On his sweep past, he pauses, turns back over a shoulder to offer him softness. “Thank you, Light.”

They glance, they stand. Just to be the cheeky bastard he’s forever known, Light presses two fingertips to his lips, puckers to them in a blow outward.

L blinks, and with a tentative hand, reaches to catch the kiss, and makes pretend of tossing it to the floor on his walk out into the hallway.

“Oh, come on,” Light laughs, turning to wipe the handtowel along the drips on the sink lip, a smile testing his very own all the way to a glance for the mirror.

That’s where he gasps all his teeth nearly out of place.

_Awww, how cute. And I thought you and Misa together made me gag, I had no idea how cutesy you’d be with your worst enemy._

The words just about escape him in the face of his face, of _its_ face leering back in the bathroom mirror still flecked with droplets, eyes glown gold and incisors all spiked, the pale blue of death coating every morsel of grieving flesh.

_Good idea trying to get him off the case, by the way. Too bad he didn’t take the bait, but you could always kill him again. That worked wonders last time._

Still- Light is still enough to place a plaque afront, never the audacity to risk variance.

_Hey, what’s the matter?_ prods Ryuk’s grating voice after a well while of it. _Don’t remember your best friend? Come on, hook up the GameCube, we can hang out like old times._

Mouth hung opened, a fool of all ends, he twists in such a finger-snap rush to peer over one shoulder, yet is still left in the air of his own solitude. Laughter follows him all the way back to his turn for the mirror posing only himself again.

Light stares at his reflection.

The towel lifts to wipe away the boundaries between.


	9. Chapter 9

Today is for certain the twentieth of February. He’s sure of it this time. Whether or not it’s the same day still as the morning he’d thought it first- that’s perched for interpretation. But today is the twentieth, because he can hear the excitement in his mother’s voice as she sings through the static of her old wall phone, _“Eight days until your biiiirthday!”_

“Hi, Mom,” he replies against his smile. The office is quiet enough around him for a phone call to seem inappropriate, yet no rebukes hit him. Not especially, once the words fall from him and his father’s attention is caught a yard over at his own table of paperwork, joy cutting through the stress of his face to see his son’s kindness splayed out in such a fashion. Light leans back against his chair. The one beside him rests emptied.

_“Sorry to bother you at work, sweetness- oh, would you mind asking your father when he’ll be home, if you get the chance? I have to know how much rice to cook for dinner.”_

“Yes, I’ll be sure to ask him,” is all Light has to say for, from that same length away, his father to call back, “Tell her, about six o’clock.”

Smirking and nodding, relaying and rejoining what she’s to say to him all the way to her beginning a list of questions bottled up for him, evidently. Light listens, considers, though in the middle of her wondering if he still wears the same size slack as he did a year prior (oh, no reason, absolutely unrelated to any gifts he’ll be receiving come eight days forward), his focus gives way to the vibration rattling straight against his head. The phone pulls downward for his eyes to gather. _Misa._ Tenacity curls up in Light’s throat. Surely, his mother will think the line died off, blame technology, or think something big’s come up at work, or- no matter what’ll come of it, he bites on guilt a while long enough to be true, yet has more hot an issue to settle. The new call is accepted. His eyes scan the room before pressing it back to his face, smile forcing with it. “Yeah, 81 centimeters. I haven’t grown much.”

Clearly, there’s confusion in her silence, yet if she’s as quick as he’d hope to think, she’ll play along with him. Tension pills sweat behind his hair.

_“...Light?”_ The phone shifts on her cheek. _“It’s Misa. Can you hear me?”_

“Yes,” he says, to which she asks further, _“Are you somewhere where you can’t talk right now?”_

“Yes,” he says, to which she responds, _“Okay, I’ll be quick then. Meet me at my apartment, the complex on Eleventh Street. Second floor. I have some_ super _important info that I wanna tell you right away!”_

Timing coincides to the creak of the seat beside him, L returning to crouch over the work he’d left behind. Noticing the call on Light’s cheek, he pays close mind, the focal point’s certain, thinks he’ll move his inspection away with his continuation, “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m too busy to go out right now. How about dinner soon, though?”

_“Dinner? You want to take me on a date?”_ She squeals so loudly he frets his cover blown. Composure sifts back in a clear of her throat. _“Okay, pick me up tonight, same place, around seven? I should be done with this shoot by then… Speaking of which, I should get back before my manager has a fit. Bye, Light! I’ll see you later for our dinner date, heheh-”_

He kills the call before she’s finished her gushing, but he can’t stand to feel the burn of it. It’s scandal. He glances to the one next to him. L’s busied in his work, fingers clipping away a mile a minute over his keyboard. In a better mind, he perhaps should have accepted the initial offer to drive over to Eleventh Street now, get it done with, stop for sweets on his way back and claim the line was just _ridiculous._ At the very least then, he wouldn’t have to sit in the swill of his penitence all afternoon through work, all evening through pretending to relax at home, feet crossed in a rest over his lap and L leant the length of those legs away, a thick book spread open on his thighs concerning the logistics of paranormal phenomena. Yellow page tabs stick up from the section on East Asian folklore. Light keeps his hand rested on the ankles in his lap, news station bothering his ears though not so as much as the tick of his watch as deep sunset approaches.

“Light,” calls him as one thin page flips. “What’s your thoughts on chicken alfredo and red velvet cake?”

Whatever world he’s been spiraling fades away to squint question at him. “Well, I’d hope they weren’t in the same pan.” The dead gaze that meets him urges him better. “Is that what you want for dinner? ...I actually-” But he halts. For no reason. Stops there, and develops fever behind his neck. “No, that’s perfect. I can go pick up food at that restaurant you like, the place by the little hat store. I can...get my father a new hat while I’m out. I’ve been meaning to do that for a while.”

A flicker in L’s face warns Light there’s trepidation folding over his story. L rests his hands on the smooth of the page he’s paused reading. The evening is burgundy.

“That’s an hour roundtrip,” L finally out lets. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t.” He’s already on his feet, coat buttoning up the front. Light turns around, bends at the waist enough to lift the cool pale of knuckles to his lips. “Anything for the most beautiful man in the world, though.”

L remains unchanged the whole while, hand dropped back for himself to place on the page again. His legs shift against the sofa cushions, drawing up higher against himself, not once a lick of delight or fury or farce. He...sits there. And looks at him. And Light knows it’s like him, but it’s not _like_ him, yet it isn’t enough to peel his jacket from his shoulders or tug him back inside the front door. Once his back is to it, and the coming night wind is scraping his bones, he makes a dash for the driveway park of his Honda, wedding band slipping into a left pocket on the trip forth.

He never makes it to the second floor of the complex on Eleventh Street because there’s two black stiletto heels parked on the pavement outside when he pulls up.

“Hi,” says her slide into the passenger seat that rides her dress high enough to show garters. “I’m so happy to see you,” the fresh iron of her hair tells him, and the lavender perfume of her breasts asks, “Where are we going for dinner?”

He pauses there with the ignition running, Misa inches from his heat and waiting for him dearly.

“We don’t have to go anywhere,” withers her heartbeat. “If you have something important to tell me, then tell me here.”

The bangles on her wrist blink with the streetlamps. She sets her arms to her sides, stiff, glossed bottom lip sticking to a pout. “But you asked me out on a date. You can’t abandon me like that.” Either hand flips to crossing over her chest as she leans defiantly back in her place. “No date, no information. _Hmph!”_

_Jeez, I’ve never seen her stand up to you like that before,_ Ryuk gawks. _Rem must be one strong influence._

Hands squeeze the steering wheel.

“...Somewhere nice,” he replies.

_Somewhere dark,_ replies the voice upstairs. Misa grins a sweet melody while Light pumps the gas to fight the growling moon.

He opens the car door for her. He walks by her side up to the honey glow of the lamps inside. He holds the door for her. He lets her sit in her side of the booth first. Gentleman. The most perfect gentleman who’s greatest date experience stems from girls strewn throughout high school, mostly to impress his father up until he’d turned nineteen and the glint in his eyes when they set upon the world’s greatest detective could not be kept quiet; but they never went on dates, don’t even now. So a date with someone else isn’t unfaithful of him, because he’s not cheating on he and L’s dates, because the only dates he and L go on are takeaway styrofoam in the living room, movies rented four years after their theater release, hands held in secret beneath the desks at work. A date isn’t unfaithful of him, _especially_ a pretend date with his pretend girlfriend. Nothing’s off. Nothing’s off at all.

_Nothing but your wedding ring,_ Ryuk is quick to remind, and he’s just as quick to bite his tongue behind the shield of the trifold menu.

He orders a glass of water with lemon, and leans on an elbow to glaze over Misa’s rose-tinted smile.

“Thank you for indulging me tonight,” she says, humble. A finger curls through her blonde. “I want to make you just as happy, so I’ll tell you everything new I learned, like I promised.”

Still propped on a fist, lids halfmoon, Light nods her onward, waits as she gathers herself before he’s caught on exhilaration enough to break thunder past his gaze.

“Rem told me about a certain person you wanted her to kill. His name was L.”

Light only knows how to stare.

The lights are dim here, glowing orange cream above their heads.

Silence.

The waitress returns, his water set down with a wave in its glass, mouth dry against her question of entree orders.

“...Bottle of Merlot,” he tells her, to which her questioning look does not defy his crave, and he’s wobbling a wine glass to the top rim with it seconds after its delivered.

“So, about that all,” Misa goes on once she’s urged. She forks idly whatever fancy European appetizer she’d picked out, more for looks than anything else Light would guess, but nothing matters but the words soaking her lips, the motion of feeling. “What I know from Rem is you and L were rivals. He was your greatest competition, and always trying to take down Kira. He hurt me, too, he captured me and held me under surveillance for a long time.” She exhales a breath weighted by aeons. “He tried to prove you were Kira for almost a year,” and she smiles here, “But he could never do it. You won.”

A second glass is tipped to be filled. Light can barely meet her eyes.

“Right,” he says back into a tall sip. “I won.”

Misa hums a giggling. “Yep. Rem took care of him for you. Isn’t she the best?” Gradually, her cheer fades to a finger tapping the chin. “I wonder, though, since we’re alive again in this life, what happened to L? Do you think he’s out there, just _waiting_ for your first move?”

Light taps his glass with a pointer finger. “Oh, I think he’s waiting for me alright.” His lips call back the rest of the drink before another is poured, all in the distance of Misa’s subtle laughter within popping a bite behind her teeth.

Their conversation spirals the length of- hm, hold it, three, four, five… -seven glasses of wine, if he’s counting (and he’s not), and though it lasts that long he hasn’t the faintest clue anything she’s said that hasn’t pertained to himself. _You’re just so perfect, Light,_ he remembers he’d heard for sure. And something or other about the material of his coat. And other or something about how much smarter, sexier, sanguine he is than any man who could ever stand in his way. His slide into the driver’s seat is accompanied by digging hoots.

_The son of the police chief has taken to drunk driving? Where ever is the justice, Light?_

“I’m not drunk,” he says back, sniffing himself straightened after a fumble with the seat belt. Beside him, Misa tips her head into a look of wryness.

“I know you aren’t. I trust you to get me home safe.”

And he does.

And when she leans in, between the dark of the seats, he lets her lips fall all the way to his cheek before tugging himself away with the strength to uphold whiplash. Moonlight gleams in her fluttering irises. She blushes with a shake of herself, simpers around a goodnight and peels her thighs off the leather upholstery.

Light barely waits for her to shut the door before he’s gunned it down the street.

His head swims with every passing mile. Blinks come heavy. Only once does he note the front tires have veered a touch too far over the midline, swift to right himself, demands his gaze unlock to guide him boldly home. There’s no need for panic, nor guilt or anguish loud.

He grapples with his housekeys for solid minutes of front porch freeze before reaching to twist the knob and finding it latch free. His chest clears itself. Entering inside, shoes trip off into a corner spot, jacket stripped down to his elbows all the while stumbling about the familiar ridges. Whatever time it is, he can’t see the face of his watch in the pitch darkness of the living room, so he decides it unimportant.

A thick book, dozen yellow tabs poking up from various pages, sits closed on the kitchen table. There’s a tea cup in the sink, two spoons beside it left to soak. Light’s able to free one arm from his blazer by the time he pads his socks into their bedroom.

There’s only radiance in here by the moon through the window panes, by the screen of the laptop computer propped up amidst the sheets. L is in there somewhere, too, sprawled on his side within the bedding, tapping idly to the keyboard base. Two fingers pluck his bottom lip. Light beams a long crystal arch.

“Hi,” he says, balancing on both feet as though an effort. “Sweetheart. Baby?”

L releases the hold on his lip, tilting to look at the other and his stupid expression. His computer meets at the center. The room is left to shadows.

Though the darkness pinches, Light’s able to struggle his coat off to toss on the corner chair, belt to follow fore he finds himself sitting just beside L’s outstretched legs. He discerns that there is a gaze stuck upon him, yet in his wavering state, doesn’t think to read it over.

“...Hi,” he repeats. Only does his smirk die for the lift of reality. “Oh, shit. I forgot to pick up dinner, didn’t I?”

“It’s alright,” though he may sense a second layer. “I had Watari come downstairs and make me something.” The laptop clicks to the nightstand, pushing aside the lamp base for space, one of which fingers trail to flick on. His pupils constrict against the new light at half a normal rate. He blinks. L does not. “Where’s your father’s hat?”

“Huh, ah, probably on his head.” His palm rubs up the denim of the other’s thighs, and he husks to a closer lean, “I’m sorry, you’re never gonna believe this, L, you aren’t.”

“I’ll bet I won’t,” he says, though there’s less temper in his tone and more slow allowance of humor, because he isn’t mad, Light would say, just... _ugh,_ and an eyeroll, _Light is such a dumbass._ That sort of emotion, whatever it be. A sort of emotion that won’t get him with a kick to the face for pressing kisses up his throat.

“I,” and a kiss, “was at the restaurant, and I ran into some friends from high school. Three guys from the tennis team.” He kisses, he nibbles. The rounded divot of his throat moves beneath his lips in one short swallow. “I was always way better than them.”

“Mhm,” he feels hum against his mouth. Legs shift to permit Light’s crawl to straddle him at the waist. Mouths move to dance. L murmurs to him, “And you drank together for three hours, and left me here wondering if you were even still alive.”

Light runs his fingers down the sensitive ridges of L’s sides, kisses him harder. “Asahi was asking if I had a wife yet. And I told him I have the sweetest,” kiss, “sexiest,” kiss, “most intelligent husband,” _kiss-_ long and open mouthed, “in the world.”

Lips challenge him back a soft moment, then leave him to open air with fingers clutching him at the elbows. “Light,” says the most stern grip L may ever take. “I was worried about you.”

His lashes pad, throat acrid, limbs numb, heart steady.

The hands on his arms squeeze once. A kiss plants to his lips.

There’s conviction in the width of those eyes. Enough to make the liquor in Light’s stomach churn about. Pressure pins his teeth together

_Hmm, you probably feel bad about putting together such an elaborate lie now, huh? Sucks to be cared for this much._

His hand rises to slap against his flushed face, clear away all the foggy mumblings inside- and to answer them, yes, like a hypodermic pinch that swells the next day, bruised to rich tan once the fingers are pulled from his eyes by another set, brought forth to examine under thick scrutiny. L’s gaze stabs against the bare expanse of his ring finger, flicks back up to his face, one that twists with fever as he steals his hand back for himself.

“Oh- it fell off,” he excuses, knees bending back to throw him upwards. “It fell off in the car. I didn’t want to, ah, you know, mess up my driving.” His coat lifts from the chair to dig within its pocket. “It’s right here, don’t worry. I would never lose my...I would never lose...my, ah…”

With an empty hand, Light scratches through his hair, smooths to the back of his neck while the collar of his jacket hangs on the hook of a finger. He turns to face L’s solid stare.

“It must be in the car still,” Light assures, then _laughs,_ because it’s all he can think to do in such a searing spotlight of idiocy. The coat drops back to the chair. L turns over to face the closet wall.

He’s crawling on his half of the mattress within moments, hands and knees until he’s near enough to lift fingers for the other’s shoulder. No resistance, yet no melting to his very touch.

“Don’t be mad,” he pleads, or demands, or simply says. “I’ll find it.”

The sigh that folds out is perhaps worse than any treatment of silence.

“I’m not mad at you, Light,” L drawls out. “But, sometimes, you really exhaust me.”

Despite his care for reputation, his chivalry and all else- he _whines,_ and insists harder the tug at L’s shoulder.

“I love you.” Warbling little whispers. “I love you, I love you, I love you, _EEEEL-”_

“You are such an annoying drunk.” A grasp tugs so sudden on his shirt that he’s no time to steady himself before their mouths have matched.

Once parted, lain side by side in their silken sheets, Light’s nose nudges against the warmth of L’s neck, and he mumbles to just the two of them, “But a cute one.”

L hums what sounds like agreement, stroking a hand down his husband’s back.

“I’m not drunk anyway,” comes out muffled. Very sudden, the heat of their entwined touches tricks him into fatigue, lays him down and covers him with a blanket sewn from kisses. That’s how he feels with L. “I got Misa home safe...I’m a good driver.”

“Misa,” repeats above his head. Light’s throat sticks against itself. Huh. What had he said now?

But L fills him in by continuum. “Misa...your sister’s friend, yes? You didn’t mention anything about her being there.”

“My sister’s friend…” An arm reaches up to hold him around the chest. His chin tips up to beg kisses from him again.

L tilts his head. “She mentioned her when we were at your parents’ house last. Remember the-”

Another whine spins out. He hugs harder. “I don’t _caaare_ right now. Please just kiss me. And hug me. And _fuck me-_ pleeease.”

Flare tempts the skin of his shoulders, arms, a headrush as the gift for his mind; he’s peering at the ceiling, with only the shadow of L in between to obscure it. Lips press against his.

Sat atop his hips, L leans hot breath to his ear. “With that attitude, I can’t resist.”

Though he’s dizzied, Light writhes at the first touch of fingers against his belt buckle.

Nothing’s off.


	10. Chapter 10

No way in any speck of hell is he going in to work the next morning. His father will sniff out a hangover in seconds. And of more salience, his temples are throbbing too harshly to lift more than an inch from his pillows. They only do so for the smell trespassing his bedroom. Coffee.

That’s delectable enough, but having it personally delivered to his bedside, as black as he likes it in his most favorite mug- now that’s heaven in a handbasket. L’s shadow blocks the morning sunlight perfectly. The coffee cup is placed to the nightstand. Light makes no move to accept it, yet all the same is his appreciation to purr a noise of it out. He opens what he can of his eyes to find the sun burning them fierce. Ripples settle atop the mug.

 _Hey, Light, you’re up,_ feels like cymbals berating his brain. _If you wanna get out of this one with your jewels intact, check your left pocket._

Far be it from his belief to sprint ahead this way, but the next time he’s the strength to flinch a nerve, his arm is squeezing between himself and the sheets to fish around his left slack pocket, just as told. The cut of a silver band, warmed by overnight press, slips back into place. A sense of _correctness_ replaces the dull ache in his abdomen.

Far be it from himself to ever treat the dirty parasite in his brain with enough hospitality to _thank_ it, though something short of appreciation may niggle him as he shifts as far as his will desires across the bed. He takes a breather when his head starts to spin. The coffee sits tepid on the nightstand.

“Good morning,” floats its way into the kitchen, where every step he pretends is not a hundred foot hurdle. After he pulls himself near enough to the mid table, computer screen perched up before dashing fingers, he spies the two white pills set beside a half glass of water. L says nothing. Shortly, Light reaches to claim them, headache throbbing tenfold with the tip back to swallow. The glass sets back emptied now as he takes his seat.

“Are you hungry?” L mumbles. “Would you like some scrambled eggs?”

Very instantly does his forehead drop to the balance of his palms. His groan comes pitifully. “Thank you, suggest the one food in the world you know grosses me out.”

When he has the gusto to glance up again, a smirk is painting L’s mouth. He never takes his focus off the work before him.

After not several minutes, the typing quiet on the surface yet every key a hammer on his ears, Light folds his arms to the table to rest his eyes within, nuzzling just the perfect position out as to still keep a mild watch on the other, mouth freed to wonder, “It’s past nine, isn’t it? Are you going to the station?”

Typing. It does not pause until L steps his gaze away to peruse Light a fleeting moment, returns as he sniffs into an answer. “I’m doing my own outside research. And I’m...sixty five percent sure you’d prefer me to stay home with you today.”

Despite the effort, Light curves his lips to joy, stretches his arms ahead like a lazy summer cat and only stiffens once he notices the attention garnered by his left hand. He lifts it higher for the other’s examination. “I found it, see, no worries.”

“Mmm…” bleeds the noncommittal response. “Don’t take it off again, and you won’t have to worry about losing it.”

“I didn’t take it off, it must have fallen off,” he waves off. “Besides...I don’t remember much at all about last night, but I know I’d never have a reason to take off my _wedding ring,_ of all things.”

L clicks around the screen a while. Light ignores the nausea beating down the doors of his stomach.

“Don’t forget to redress your sutures today,” finds him after minutes of his watch ticking against ache. Light lifts his head, peers at the gauze beginning to shred fibers round the edges. Idly, he picks at one, nods as he goes along. “Right. I’ll do that soon.”

Clicking. Typing. Picking.

Over the kitchen chiffon, sunlight shifts positions as to reflect perfectly along the granite of the counters, the silver of the sink where a dozen dishes sit, plates of pastry crumbs and frosting smears he knows he’ll be washing later. Morning pets angles along their room and the worth of it. Cupboards sit quietly. The stove says nothing.

“Hey. L,” steals what strength remains in him.

Like a weight, the other cranes his head to face him. Nothing said, nothing breathed. The black line blinks where his typing had paused, waiting.

Light draws his fingertips against their palms.

“...I’m sorry,” he says. The pans don’t dare hum. Not a word from the dining chairs. “I realize I’ve been...messing up a lot lately. I promise, I can make it up to you soon.”

Whilst every last appliance hushes to listen, the sky and sun and peach trees all polite- everything is nothing there, just for them, and L understands in the cut of his core, staring still at the passion scorching in his amber eyes that, if nothing else, Light will fight to hell and back for him to believe his resolve here is true. He’ll fix it. He’ll fix everything. Even with the throbbing hangover. He’ll fix the whole world.

“That’s alright. I knew what I was getting into when I married a twenty-two year old.” His focus shifts away again. Light blinks a thrumming pattern. “And your drunken nonsense may have given me just what I need to dig further into our current investigation, so...thank you.”

All of it equal parts irks him, yet most prominent must he wonder after the last. Heart in his throat, “What do you mean? What did I say last night that could have had to do with the investigation?”

A thumbnail runs across his lips, back, forth. Staring.

“That one mall in particular has already been the scene of two deaths. One man sweeping the floor suddenly collapsed, and another was seen on security cameras walking through there before suffering a heart attack at the train station just around the corner…” His finger taps. “Your mother mentioned going there to buy a porcelain dish set. While I remain unbiased in my rulings, I somehow doubt a forty-seven year old mother of two is out committing mass murder. But,” and here’s the part that draws Light to lean in, “Sayu...she came home the night we were there, gave the excuse that she was out late because she saw a popstar at the mall-”

“There’s no way,” he’s quick to cut in, ire simmering in the knot of his guts. “My sister is not behind all these deaths. I won’t let you believe that for even a second.”

“Your vehemence only draws more suspicion on her,” L digs, yet replaces himself with a sigh that carries, “But, relax. I don’t see any true reason to suspect her. It’s her friend she mentioned was with her at the time that has caught my attention.” He tilts his head the slightest angle, eyes cast iron dark. “The same friend you took your wedding ring off to drive home last night.”

“Wait, seriously?” Suddenly, wrist pulses race. Pieces shift together in his molten skull.

Cackling joins them. _Wow, Light, I almost don’t have to try to get you to entertain me anymore. You’re making a bigger fool of yourself than I ever could._

“Twenty four year old magazine model, young and pretty, the perfect candidate to be friends with a university student and the mistress of a bored early twenties civilian.” L gives no truths in his gaze. “And the perfect suspect in this investigation.”

“Hold on.” He hardly knows what to unravel first. He shakes his head. “You think I’m cheating on you? How could you ever-?”

“No, not at all,” he assures promptly. A breath expands his chest against his lap. “I said I knew what I was getting into when I married you. That being the case, I was well aware you were quite promiscuous, and if that’s the thrill you need, then by all means, lead her on as much as like. As long as I don’t find panties in your backseat, I have no reason to stop you.” Another even breath, and his voice just the same, _bored,_ closely, when he drawls, “Would you make me a cup of coffee?”

He’s frozen in his place there, leant forward with a gaping gawk, leaning back against the creak of the wooden chair behind himself.

“Did you just call me a whore?”

Laughter pounds inside his head until it chokes itself.

Quietly, L glances to him, humming a short note out. “You could use the word _coquette_ if you’d prefer.”

The thirty five percent that would have wished him gone blooms to fruition there.

Chair legs scrape the tile.

“I think I’ll go in today,” Light says, steps heading toward the bathroom gleam. “I’m feeling a lot better. I can search through the records there to see if Amane has any history we should know about.”

“Mhm,” he hears from his stand at the washroom sink. “I’m sure that you can.”

 _This guy’s funny when he suspects you like that,_ says Ryuk. _Better start being more careful. Set up a bomb in your desk drawer, or something._

His gums bleed again.

But he’s prepared himself in record time to swing out the front door, finds it’s snowed a light dusting across the ground. Every step expels the pavement beneath.

“You think I’m lying, L?” grumbles behind the windshield wipers. “I’ll show you who’s lying.”

A four minute drive, the police station creeps beneath his tires in just exactly that, pulling to park in his usual reserved section of the lot, the corner lines. Behind him is left a generous view of the stark gray building and its trees around, scenery he captures aside his sweet smiling face with a click of his phone camera.

 _At work._  is sent as the message beneath it.

 _Hey, Light, I don’t mean to butt in here,_ he hears as he drops his phone to the center console, _but if L suspects your girlfriend, he’ll probably call her in for questioning sooner or later._

“I’ve already thought of that.” His expression reads fire. A hand tugs the car into reverse, leaning back to pull from the parking lot and veer toward his destination.

The morning carries him the twenty minutes south it takes to find less clean cut portions of the city. Tires kiss the curb. He allows the exhaust to die off, preserves the running heat he’d collected on the drive as he lifts his phone again to his hands. His last sent message glints with a _read_ checkmark beneath it. He swipes away to select a new contact.

 _I’m outside,_ he sends, expecting to see her tripping over herself within seconds to burst out the apartment door. Instead, his palm vibrates.

_Omigod i’m at work right now 0____0 can you wait a few hours?! i’m sososo sorry_

His mouth purses.

 _It’s urgent,_ is all he sends. The answer is delayed, yet still delivers all the same.

_OK dont go anywhere i’ll be there in 5 minutes!!!_

Beneath it, she attaches a looped gif file of a cat running on a treadmill.

Light sighs.

Knuckles tap his window after thirteen minutes of silent stomachache.

“ _Liiight!_ I’m here, I’m so sorry I kept you waiting.” He catches only the last half of it after unmuffling her with a roll down of the glass. She takes the opportunity to wrap her hands around the edge, leans inward in a way that makes him feel like a caged puppy dog taking pity leers. He’d spit in her face if he weren’t a perfect gentlemen.

“What did you need me for? I told my manager my grandfather had a heart attack so she’d let me leave early." No comment comes to mind, but what does is halted by a finger that presses out to silence his parted lips. “Wait, don’t tell me yet. Let’s go up to my apartment. It’s _freezing_ out here.”

“Misa…” But she’s already leapt up atop the sidewalk to prance for the front steps. Ryuk hooks rusted cackling in his ears.

In half his mind, he’s glad he’d been dragged up here, folding back his tall coat collar as he steps into the creamy velvet of her home, dark walls and carpet and ornate antiques along the furniture. The living room, gothic as her self image, is modest, a kitchenette to the side wherein he notes two cat dishes with kibble overspilling, and curtained off archway to the other of which she leads him now, spotting inside a variety of taboos, a wide black poster printed with a pentagram star. Sans any at all, the whole place feels candlelit. She pushes the beads of the curtain aside for him, and he watches her stumble over to sitting on the soft of the bed lining the wall. Hands go instantly to work wresting the red heels off her feet. “ _Uck-_ these shoes are _killing_ me. They’re barely visible in the pictures anyway, my designers just want me to suffer.”

They clunk to the floor beside her bed, eyes moving to them a split second before the main attraction of her overcoat peeling off draws his gaze. The sultry smirk on her lips tells him she thinks he can’t get enough. “We were doing a shoot for next year’s Pretty Misses calendar. I got to be February. Isn’t this outfit cute?” Manicured hands gesture to the skin tight scarlet dress down her hourglass, hearts adorning the curves of her chest. If Light’s reminded of Valentine’s Day one more time, he thinks he’ll have to rent a guillotine.

“Have a seat,” Misa ushers, hosieried legs pointing out before herself. The invitation falls to deafness, only casting him a step towards her.

“Misa, I have something important to ask y-”  
  
“Oh, my God!” Both hands fly to her face. “Yes, yes, a million times yes! Of course I’ll marry-”

“Do you know my sister?”

She seems to straighten, then, arms at her sides and lips powdered in pout. “Huh? Oh… Who’s your sister? Is she one of the girls at the agency?”

He hopes to God never. A shake of the head. “Yagami Sayu. She goes to Kanazawa College of Art.”

Midsentence, Misa’s already raring to go, one finger pointed high aside her smile. “Oh! I know Sayu, we hang out together all the time. Oh, my gosh. I had no idea she was your sister! That’s incredible, I get to be best friends with my sister-in-law- well, _future_ sister-in-law- or, well, _past_ sister-in-la-”

“You can’t tell her about us.” Straight to the point. Deal with it quickly.

Misa switches emotions yet again. “What? But why not?”

His face remains stern. The candlelight flickers nowhere.

“Because...she’ll be upset if she hears I have a girlfriend and she doesn’t,” he explains softly. “She’s a very nice girl, but she’s sensitive about stuff like that. I don’t want her to feel bad.”

“Wow…” Legs swung forward off the bed now, she sits with a hand to her chest, eyes nearly glazed in wet around their cobalt contact lenses. “That’s so sweet of you, Light. You’re such a caring big brother. But…” Her pucker trims into a minor frown. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep it in. You’re all I think about all day long, I might slip up and mention you sometime.”

“Think about your career,” he drives home next, checking off each premeditated layer to ruse. “You don’t want your popularity to suffer because you’re seeing someone.” The taste is vacuum lint on his tongue. He swallows around it. Hard. “If you have to talk about having a boyfriend, then make up a name for me. In fact, you should use it when you mention me to _anybody_ , not just my sister.”

Should she curl within dubiety, she’ll make no move to question him. Even when the slightest film glazes her eyes, a minute of pure silence from her, she’s quick to shake away whatever advice had been branding her brain stem, clenching into a nod straightforth.

“Light...you’re so wonderful to protect me like this. You’ll always be my number one hero.” She stands to be beside him, hands clasped at her chin. His neck aches to peer downward to her. “From now on, if anybody asks, I’m dating the most handsome man in the whole entire world, Togami Hikari.”

A scowl mars that handsome face. “No, that’s way too obvious. Call me Asahi,” and he ponders, “...Asahi Yuuta.”

Misa giggles. A positive sign. “Yuuta-chan...it’s so cute! I like how unique and special your real name is...but I’ll do anything you need me to. So I’ll make sure to call you that any time I mention you.”

“Perfect,” he says, and it’s a worse pain than any hangover, than any gun to the head or fall from a ledge- he reaches out both arms, and pulls her against his chest. A whisper feathers through her sweeps of blonde. “You’re doing a great job, Misa.”

“Oh, Light…” she could practically moan back atop her breath. The arms wrapped around him loosen a fraction of a gasp, and she mends, “Oh- I mean, _Yuuta.”_

Everything’s falling without fault into place.

Behind her head, he dares to smirk.

On his drive toward home again, once he’s managed to pry himself free, he stops for a bagel, spreads cream cheese along its inside, and tears one half off to toss from the car window. Along with a half poured out coffee, it’s positioned on his desk in the next photograph he captions, _Still here._

This time around, an answer finds it.

_thats nice. did you find anything out yet_

Oh. He pops his mouth.

There’s a conversation dull against his hearing at the water cooler around the corner. One desk over, Matsuda glues popsicle sticks together in an articulate pattern (“Aizawa’s daughter has a school project due, and he asked me to help her out on it. Doesn’t it look just like the Sensōji temple?”) between glances at his phone line. Distraction fumbles with Ide a row over as well, magazine tucked underneath the paperwork on his desk. Light types slowly at first.

_I couldn’t find any criminal records, but I asked Sayu about her. She said she has all kinds of occultist things at her house. It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if she were involved in this case._

His phone sets down beside the untouched breakfast in time to a throat clearing overhead. He glances upward. Popsicle sticks clatter down to be replaced by keyboard clicks. The sound of papers shuffling taps behind him.

“Hi, Dad,” he greets the newest presence, adjusting himself more postured in his seat, unconcerned, smiling. “Sorry, I was just texting L. I wanted to check on him. He’s...pretty hungover.”

Souichirou proffers a tight nod at his blunt admissions. “...Whatever the case, wish him well for me. But I have something else I wanted to discuss with you.”

Light tilts his head in wonder, yet his father only keeps strict his strictness.

“Come with me to my personal office. I’d rather not cause a scene in front of everyone.”

 _What?_ he’d like to shout back, though it only goes so far as the insides of his eyelids that pluck back a half moment. His pupils dart toward the attention he’s collected from each side around him, Matsuda’s gray worry and the stifle of fret from Ukita.

He clenches one hand at his thigh, and rises to follow his father.

“Shut the door, please,” comes just as they step inside. Light works methodically, counting back every possible thing this could pertain to, if he’d gotten to Misa too late and she’d already gushed about her sweet handsome new boyfriend Yagami Light to his sister, if he’d been caught on the street cam swerving through the dark after seven glasses of Merlot. Something, anything. But he doesn’t know, not until he’s leant back from latching the door and finds his father facing the window shades, hands clasped behind the back, tension insurmountable.

“Light,” creeps the hairs up on his nape. One step shifts.

Souichirou turns to face him, the sun hitting his glasses, and a fathomless grin across his face.

“I just couldn’t wait until Thursday to give this to you,” he says of the envelope lifted in his hold. It transfers over the desk that separates them, Light accepting it in still nerved fingers. A nail flits underneath the sealed flap. His insides do trapeze arts.

The paper inside is unfolded in trepidation. An official stamp atop it from the NPA, addressed personally to him, dated and signatured by their head chief.

Light blinks back his astonishment.

 _Well, hey, whaddaya know,_ the voice applauds.

“...I’m being promoted?” The tug of his mouth is near impossible to repress. Moreover, the race returns to his chest for an all new cause, rereading the letter a dozen rounds before he feels a hand rest on his shoulder.

“It normally takes at least five years on the force, but I know for certain you’re ready. You’re the honorable man I raised you to be,” a vigorous lock of their eyes together, “Sergeant Yagami.”

Light swallows a tough pull, deep and divine with all the world’s determination.

“Hey, there he is!” Matsuda’s on his feet as they step out into the main room again, hands sticky with Elmer’s in claps against each other. “Congratulations, Serg!”

Blinking back surprise, he twists a glance for his father. “You already told them?”

“Yeah, we were just messing with you when we looked all concerned before,” pipes up Ukita from his place, grinning. “Your Pops told us a few days ago. Congrats!”

“Yes, but...I did promise your mother I’d keep it a secret until your birthday,” Souichirou sounds a touch ashamed to admit. “Try to seem surprised when I tell you then, if you could.”

“Right, of course,” Light smiles. Then stops. “...Does L know?”

A knowing mirth graces his mouth.

“It was his idea to recommend you for the position.”

Clapping shatters glass with every touch.

On his drive home, Light rolls the window down, and pours the rest of his coffee into the prowling streetway wind.


	11. Chapter 11

Steam pours from the crack beneath the bathroom door when he’s pocketing his housekeys. It’s a task, what with his hands so full, but he manages to balance the plastic tray to one palm, bottle tucked to the elbow, as he does so, shuts the front door with the nudge of a shoe that’s next to come off, once he’s set the supermarket run to the kitchen tabletop. Late evening light filters in through the pulled curtains. Chocolate cake and champagne. Something for each of them.

Though he lays out clothing to befit him next, they stay folded atop their bed while fingers work down the buttons of his shirt, floor his pants and belt and everything between. His watch sets with a clink to the bathroom counter after pressing himself silently as possible inside, leaves the pair of towels he’d brought to the toilet lid (pair, yes, he’d been smart to do so seeing as how too often he’s to follow the trail of drips from bathroom to bedroom) before moving his shadow along the thin white of the shower’s curtain. He pulls it aside just enough to show his face, to hone a glance all up and down him, pleasantly so, answering the surprise folded over one shoulder with a smile of his own. He greets him with a step beneath the faucet hush, brunet sticking sweetly to the contours of him, all over soreness healed by the water’s burn. Below zero for the bedroom temperature, yet shower knobs turned so far right it stings the skin from the arms. Habits. Desire. He greets him with a step into the shower, greets him with hands that explore outward for his body to press against him, L’s back to his front, greets him with lips on his shoulder’s curve and whispers that must outsell the beat of the water pressure.

“I got good news at work today,” Light tells him. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

From the flush of them, he feels the way L hums in return, vibrates up and down them both like caramel electricity. “Hmm. I do not. Was Matsuda’s desk moved farther away from ours?”

Breath brushes humor against his neck. “Close. Actually, my father told me I have the most wonderful husband in the world, who suggested I be promoted to a sergeant on the Task Force.”

“How interesting,” L says back, and Light hears the _faintest_ chortle blow through his nose. He holds him even tighter to his chest.

Softness brushes wetness, in one hand drying the droplets with a towel pressed to L’s face before moving through his hair, scrubbing, _soft,_ delicate. In his fingers he’s clasped a longer towel around the jutting bones of his hips, allows Light to take the second back and drape around his own shoulders. Their hands can hardly stand to lose each other on the walk through to their bedroom, Light dressing himself in fresh slacks and a sweater that’s kind to all his curves, peering up from dressing to find L’s already pulled thin cotton and denim over himself, just as always so usual, and rests his damp hair to the pillowcase beneath it. Half a tut, and Light approaches him, arm extending forward.

To his groaning, he persists further, tugs on the sleeve nearest. “Come to the kitchen with me. It’s only eight, that’s not bedtime yet.” Another pull, more certain this time. “I have something special for you.”

L hauls himself upward, sigh thick into the evening. “It’d better be cake.”

“You’re right, but don’t tell L,” he says as they walk forth. “I want him to be surprised.”

The top dining chair drags out for him to perch upon, eyes taking instantaneously to the plastic covered dessert as the centerpiece, counterbalanced by the pair of thin glass flutes Light retrieves from the cabinet. They waste no time being filled by sparkling gold, same as the cake container wastes no time being torn open cacophonously. He doesn’t bother with pleasantries. A spoon dives from Light’s hold to cut a portion upon it, gliding across their places to find L’s open waiting mouth. Light pulls the spoon from his lips slowly, dreadfully so for himself to watch, their eyes a marinade of lust and cherry as a tongue laps out to clean the chocolate from his lip.

“Back to back benders for you,” L comments as he plucks the glass of champagne nearer to him. It tilts up in a mock toast. “Kudos.”

Light frowns to the tempo of his shaking head. “I wanted to celebrate a little. And thank you for your part.” This time, the glasses do _clink_ together at the rims, Light’s tipping next to his mouth in a modest sip. His eyes open again to find the other’s set back to the table. Empty. His wavering smirk defies suppression.

“There’s no need to thank me,” comes around the next mouthful of frosting. “I only made a suggestion based on what I’ve seen of your behavior. Think of me as your supervisor.”

“Well, I think it’d be frowned upon to want to fuck my supervisor over his desk.” The spoon lifts away another slow pull. “So I’ll pass.”

L blinks a gradual measure, a contented cat, Light knows by now to deem that look. He watches the handle be thieved from him, watches the next bite be gathered up and offered his way. Lapping once over his lips first, he leans in to accept it.

“Thank you for taking care of me this morning,” Light murmurs then, champagne neck tipped to refill each their flutes. “I know I can be a handful. You’re always so gentle with me.”

Smooth and serene. L breathes with the falling seconds. Elbow leant to the kneecap, his hand extends, somewhat limp, to grasp for the other’s warmth, connecting their fingers as though angels’ fine wing satin.

Joy paints Light’s complexion. Subtle at first, he lifts those fingers to place his lips upon them, to the ring on the third and all the warm flesh proceeding. They squeeze around his, those fingers he kisses, and murmurs with clemency to them, “I meant what I said this morning, about making it up to you, how difficult I’ve been lately. I want you to know I care about you as much as I know you do for me. I don’t want you to have any doubts.” A slip into his pocket then, a flick of a hand so deft it could surprise them both.

“I want you to marry me,” says both he and the opened ring box in tandem.

Ryuk finds it appropriate to chime in there. _Wow. I gotta say, I wasn’t expecting that._

L’s eyes repeat the same notion.

He doesn’t have the chance to be as silent as he wishes, for the message bearer carries with him continuum.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he starts. “But it’s different. We could renew our vows, but with a ceremony this time. Invite our families, let everyone witness how much I love you. I never even bought you an engagement ring the first time.” The statement nudges the box, luxurious diamond sprouting from it like a well kempt marigold. Supermarket run, jeweler run. Still with that grasp on him, Light melds their gazes, his own of passion and another paper white, all the way up to L ever so delicately claiming his hand back to himself to rest upon his knees.

Rather than smile, or gasp or cheer or devour him in kisses and affirmation, color heats the sharpness of L’s cheekbones, and the meld from there on is refuted.

“This is...very embarrassing…” Neither seem sure where it’s all come from. L fingers the lush of one dried bang, face turned away and soft in something Light cannot pick out. “I’m content with the way things are. Something so performative isn’t much my style.”

“P...Performative?” Light allows his arms to drop to his lap.

L at last grips the gall to face him. “Perhaps that isn’t the best word choice. I only mean...I know that you love me. Whether we merely signed a certificate or otherwise, that’s not the point of a marriage, am I correct?” Lashes pad in blinks, turning a flash toward the little black box, back again forward. “If you’d like, I’ll still wear the engagement ring.”

A bubble of champagne dies away as it rises to the surface of the glass. No ripples nor breath to make it, just sparkling calm. Forever. Until, soon ago, Light’s grip tightens, shoulders back to fight the subtle tremor up his back.

“...You’re right,” comes out as an unintentional whisper. Throat cleared, as well as the mind, he’s able to trek onward. “I just...I wanted to show you how much I love you. But I should’ve known that wouldn’t be your thing. ...Honestly, it’s not really mine, either.”

The heat he never realized made it to his face is quelled in two gelid palms on each side. Such a loving gesture, he’s almost thrown even further off guard, but collects himself enough to hear L say to him, “I don’t own a suit, anyway,” before kissing his mouth.

 _Jeez, that’s pretty humiliating._ Light flinches within their kiss. _Misa would’ve never turned you down like that._

Had he no concern for himself, he’d lobotomize every last lobe.


	12. Chapter 12

They share the covers that night. They lay together in tangled limbs, they wake to no alarm and share the washroom mirror. There’s plastic in the kitchen trash, and and chocolate crumbs along the table that give away whatever midnight rendezvous had been partaken alone in whilst he himself had slept. The champagne bottle is the same weight as it sits on a refrigerator shelf. He hopes to change that by night come.

The car ride to work is quiet. It isn’t that it’s so different a morning than any other- in fact, just exactly the same at face value -but he finds himself still wishing for relief from the throb, the thrum, the double digits seconds for every first. It isn’t that it’s different, and it isn’t that it’s awkward- or, no, that’s just right. That’s it. All he can think about is the look on his face. The trouble he’d gone to, the careful planning regardless of how _on a whim_ it’d met him.

He tries in earnesty to let it go. He knows L has, but perhaps that’s what stings him most.

Women don’t refuse Yagami Light. Men don’t, either. Whatever breed of creature gave life to the one beside him now in his top corner desk- _that’s_ who refuses Yagami Light, with his heart on a sleeve in such a fashion as he had. It burns.

But he doesn’t let it get to him.

When L moves his hand just right, the light will reflect off the three hundred thousand yen diamond, and Light will be reminded that, yes, he loves him, but, no, not enough to spend one day as an extrovert.

He shakes his head, and focuses back upon the task atop his computer screen.

Another day proves a twin. A triplet next. Light halfway expects, after they have styrofoam leftovers in the living room for dinner and L had spoiled the end of a forensics drama for him, to wake up in bed alone someday, someday when the realization that it isn’t just the wedding that’s not his style, but the union altogether. Ryuk serves no good as a therapist for such woes.

He half expects to wake up alone, so when it is that he does, however many days since the mortification of his whole form, he’s two parts stuffed with terror.

Cold tile meets every step. Around every corner his nose pokes, searching scanning until giving up the heist for the sanctity of seeing a single car in their snowblown driveway. He pulls his own the whole four minute drive around the bend, parks in the spot next to his usual one, and lets his body be walked inside the police station.

Several men strew the desks of the main room, though none that he can place a name to. When he asks after his father, one directs him curtly to the direction of the interrogation chambers.

“Dad?” he calls once he spots his turned back down the corridor. “What’s going on? Did we catch someone?”

His father presses the frames higher upon his nose. “Not exactly…”

Light doesn’t bother to question it further after he’s approached close enough. He follows instead the train of his father’s stern eyes through the glass panel ahead of them. Before a breath, he’s gasping for more.

“Ah, Light. You’re just in time.”

Through the window, his presence has been pointed out by the one crouched on the nearest chair, head turned over a shoulder to glance him over. Farther back across a folding table, a second seat pins back the form of another, wrists in cuffs behind her back, a metallic mask pulled down to conceal from forehead to nose; if Light looks closer, which he wishes he hadn’t, he can see her ankles are cuffed to her chair legs, and the middle of her waist bound back by white rope.

“Light?” gasps weakly from her in response, but something speaks better to her to fade the hope from her throat. “I...It’s so dark in here, _please,_ take off this blindfold so I can see the light, pretty please?”

“L, what the hell are you doing to her?!” The window holds him back no longer, stepping inside the stout interrogation room of only table and chairs and lamp glow. “You can’t do this to someone, suspect or not. It’s inhumane!”

“Well, under normal circumstances, yes,” he calmly responds. “But we have reason to believe the assailant in this string of murders is capable of things beyond human limits. For all we know, she could kill you with a blink of an eye.”

The bounds shift against her writhing body. “Please...someone help me. I shouldn’t be here-”

“ _L,”_ grates through his grit molars. “How can you call yourself a man of the law if this is how you treat innocent people?”

“Innocent? But you said yourself you believe Amane Misa to be involved in this case.” His finger traces his lip. The tone of his voice, the way he _looks_ at him- it sickens Light to every last nerve. “Am I wrong?”

Sudden, she stops fighting the restraints, limp to dumbness in her place. “Light...Light would never say that about me… You’re lying, stalker! Pervert! _Agh-!_ Let me _go!”_

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” L says to her, ignoring for the moment Light’s snarling glower. “Not until you tell me what you know.”

Misa’s legs attempt to pull themselves forward, working only to scrape her chair a fine centimeter across the floor. “I already _told_ you, I don’t know anything about any murders! I don’t know who’s responsible, but if I did...I’d thank him!”

Light’s lids perk high. She clenches every muscle.

“Whoever’s bringing justice to all these criminals is the hero that killed my parents’ murderer.” A breath falls ragged from her, stealing the audacity from her cells. “He’s...my hero. And so is my boyfriend, Asahi Yuuta- I know he’ll come rescue me any second. H-He’ll have you all arrested for what you’re doing to me now!”

“Asahi Yuuta,” mumbles against the finger back on his lip. “The same Asahi that Light was out drinking with last Wednesday, when he gave you a ride home?”

Shock tapers down his skin.

Ryuk laughs.

“...Yes,” Misa says in a gasp. “That’s my boyfriend, my Yuuta, my _hero.”_

“And your _hero_ couldn’t drive you, because he’d had too much to drink, so Light stepped up and offered to instead. Am I correct in these assumptions?”

“Yes,” she says again, no hesitation.

Ryuk sputters out, in jest, _She’s an even better liar than you are._

Five fingertips drum against the table. Light’s yet to intervene here, though the option does cross him. But he must work with nothing but caution. A single mistake could topple the whole tower.

Thrum. A pop of the lips. “And what happened after he dropped you off at home?”

Thinking spurs her to silence. “Well…” He watches her shoulders twitch. “Well, Light dropped me off, and...and I went inside, and went to bed. He left right away, I don’t know where he went.”

“Uh huh,” he says. “And is there any particular reason you find it appropriate not to call him _Yagami?”_

“She’s a family friend, L, just cut it out.” That there is where Light hits a palm the table between them, glare dropping down to assert his intransigence. “I said Misa could have something to do with this case, but so could I, or my father, or _anybody_. There’s no way of knowing who’s guilty and who’s not, but you can’t go around tying people up and insisting that they’re Kira!”

“...Kira?”

Fury melts from him like a torch to ice.

The will to glance around finds him. To the right, Misa sits in cold brewed quiet. From the window, his father’s silhouette has vanished.

From his lean against the table, and with eyes upon him still, Light straightens back, gathering composure into one sharp inhale. Focus.

“Yeah, Kira. ...I’ve been doing research outside our primary sources. There’s forums all over the internet about these deaths, the public has taken to calling the one responsible for them all _Kira.”_ Light does not accept any stare. “Why can’t you just trust me when I tell you things? Even if you can’t trust anybody else, if _nothing else..._ you should still believe in _me…”_

Could he conjure a tear down his lashes, the performance would be flawless.

Evidently, it works just as well, for his look back straight proves scrutiny has left him, L placed in the loss for words, weightless, thoughtless.

One hand makes to slide for the transmitter hooked to his belt loop.

“Mogi,” he speaks into it. “Please come remove Amane-san from her restraints.” His eyes shift forward to two glowing face. “And...send a fruit basket to her house.”

Five minutes out of captivity, and she’s already bounced to life again.

 _“Yay!”_ The surrounding hallway, where just the two of them exist, echos with her cheer. She doesn’t bother to rub at the rawness of her wrists, too enthralled by reaching to throw her arms over his shoulders. “I knew you’d save me somehow, I just knew it!”

Light does not struggle to be rid of her. He waits, stiffly, until she drops herself away, boots clopping down against the tile floor. Their attentions lock, broken only by a shuffling paces away. Light glances up to it. His expression sits solid.

“...I’m going to take Misa home,” he tells, doesn’t ask, just barely waits for the bob of L’s nod on his way toward the water cooler. With one hand on her elbow, he leads her toward the door. The dreamy smile on her face goes disregarded.

“So that guy was really L?” Tires swerve around the craters in the coming roads. Misa’s ponytails flutter in the open window breeze. “I had no idea you two were so close now. It’s funny how things work out like that, huh?”

Light continues driving.

“He must not have the memories we do,” she goes on. “I wonder if he’ll get a voice in his head one his death day, too.”

Light continues driving.

Then, in the middle of the empty street, all of his weight drops against the brake pedal.

Amber eyes stare on at him in shock.

“...Light? What’s-?”

But he’s no ears to drink it. Heartbeat pulses in every fingertip. Snow borders the sidewalk edges, sky dark still from its fall.

The world turns upside down on him, then turns him back right with his insides just a little scrambled.

“...When did L die?” His head snaps directly to her. Hands leave the wheel to clench in conviction. “When did he die, damn it?!”

Misa flinches at the strength of his roaring voice, though she has no room to take offense when it isn’t she they point toward; her pupils turn inward toward each other to match as best she can where Light’s temper directs. The very middle of her forehead.

She cowers back a half inch. “U...Uhh…” And her lips bring together to eyes shut tight. A steaming minute passes before she whines, “ _Please,”_ and from there settles back into real time to deliver, faintly, “...November fifth.”

In several more breaths, he’s able to calm himself enough to pinch the steering wheel again. They curve back into driving, and the silence that accompanies it.

 _Hadn’t thought of that one yet, huh?_ jeers Ryuk. _Don’t worry, he died years before you did. If he was going to get it, it would have happened then._

The soothe makes him feel foolish enough to scuff his teeth together.

Until he goes on.

 _Unless he_ has _had it all this time, and he knows exactly who you are and he’s just been toying with you since the day you met._

Light swallows a bite of trembling massacre.

 _Don’t drive yourself crazy wondering about it, though,_ Ryuk says, and laughs himself hoarse as they cascade into the horizon.


	13. Chapter 13

They’re sitting in bed another night, one on each side, moonlight pale. The squint to Light’s eyes as he attempts to read over the book in his lap reminds him he’d been due for an optometrist visit before the last new year. Doesn’t matter. He’s alright.

From just the inches that split them, skin soft as sin powders his peripheral haze. 

“...I’m sorry,” he hears croon out. It could mean a number of things. It could mean everything, or nothing at all, but he likes to keep his faith. 

It could mean he shouldn’t set his book away to allow instead the warmth of hair laid in his lap, but he’d much rather accept the soft strokes against his palm, the lean downward it takes to press lips to his temple. 


	14. Chapter 14

L stays home from work two mornings later. Light pretends not to know it’s to plan a birthday surprise for him.

He’d be a lying bastard if he said he didn’t walk into the station with a smirk on his face, though, knowing the minutes would only strike for so long before fawning found him.

It’s childish to make a whole day out of being the centerpiece, what he says goes all for being born twenty four years prior, yet all the same he does not chide away the toss of confetti across his desktop when Matsuda walks in to find him.

“Happy birthday, Light- Oh, I mean, happy birthday, _Sergeant.”_ His grin is giddy, goofy, horrible in the way it worships him.

Quickly behind, steps rain to enter, geniality spread from Mogi and Ukita’s well wishes. Aizawa isn’t far behind to nod him good health on his way toward a conjoining hallway (though not before allowing the shortest smile to wrap around a memory of this same date being only his ninth rotation round the sun, how excited he’d been to be brought into work by his father for his special day- and Light could almost blush for the storytelling, nodding a watery laugh toward his final disappearance around the corner). The commotion clears away for work to resume as normal, confetti sweeping up to one palm yet knowing his life’ll never truly be rid of all the tiny shreds, and a shadow from a front corner door, window obscured by a pull string shade, opens to drop staid mirth unto the room.

“Light,” Souichirou says, the fondest touch of a smile in his eyes. Light simply nods to him, and says, “Thanks, Dad,” before anymore can come out.

His father laughs, and leaves a quick pat to his arm on his stride past toward one hallway.

 _So, you’re a man now,_ admires the throb in his head. _I almost feel proud._

Light taps a stack of paperwork into neater array, decides it’s time he gets to work.

Only so long may it last an hour’s half before interruption brays.

Dress shoes echoing on the clean tile floor. Dust brushing from sleeves where it never landed. The clearing of a throat, tough and certain.

“Hello.” A new voice. An interested one. “Is there a Yagami here?”

And he too proves the same at that. Breath rests on his lips as he moves to view the conversation across the room, the civilian strolled right into the main center room speaker over Matsuda’s desk, briefcase in hand, trenchcoat long.

“Um- yes,” sputters Matsuda himself, clearly taken aback by the man’s sudden presence within their center headquarters. “There’s two of them, actually.”

The lengths of the man’s hair sweeps to a side as he catches up to the movement in his peripheral, dropping a slow glance for Light’s corner place. Immediately, he gags hard enough to knock the glasses down his nose, face straining red hot as he grasps a vise of every finger.

“...Hello, sir,” Light tries his best to amicably greet. “Is there, ah, something I can help you with?”

He balks back to the stranger’s sudden harsh bow alongside the toss of his briefcase to the desk between them. Loud, everything about this man is just so, until he straightens up and speaks with harp strings.

“Forgive me for barging in this way. I would be honored if you would hear me out for just one moment of your time.” The metal clasps click open, revealing meticulous stacks of paperwork inside. “My name is Mikami Teru, I am a prosecutor for a local private law firm. If you’ll allow me, I’m interested in representing your Task Force for any legal proceedings that should come out of your part in the Kira investigation.”

 _Oh, hey, I remember this nutjob,_ Ryuk admires.

The austerity of him astounds Light for a brief while, until he’s offered a piece of paper from within the case- then he’s just, for all rationale, astounded.

 _GOD!_ the neat kanji lettering begs of him. _PLEASE, REMEMBER WHO I AM AND WHAT WE HAD TOGETHER. I WANT TO AID YOUR EVERY ENDEAVOR. LET ME BE YOUR MOST LOYAL APOSTLE AGAIN._

“Mikami, was it?” Leant ever slight in his chair, Light scans over the note for the better part of a while, leaving the other to snivel and strain over his desk. “...Alright. That sounds like a good idea.”

A strangled gasp rolls up from Mikami’s mouth. Before the minute can end, he’s surprised the neighboring staff men with a solid drop to his knees, hands shaking in their clasp up toward Light’s bored eyes.

“Thank you, _thank you!_ I promise you, on my life, you won’t regret this!”

A gaze flirts over top him. Something dreadful taps the base of his abdomen.

“That’s quite alright,” he tells his full attention. “I imagine it must be difficult for you to get any work lately, with all these criminals dying off.”

Another noise of tight glory leaves him as he struggles up to his feet. “Oh- ah, ah, of course. I can barely get the time of day from anybody else.” Licking his top lip, Mikami nudges the core of whatever sensation coasts him already. “I’m sure you will give me the time of day though, won’t you, Yagami-sama- _euh,_ san. Yagami-san?”

A test. Light can smell it.

His chin, lifted high to face him, drops enough to glance for his left wrist.

The same watch he’s worn since his father gifted it to him the first year of university. The same watch he’s always worn.

But it’s different this glance.

It doesn’t tell him the time, only gleams his eyes in its reflective face, only builds pressure below his skin that stuffs him til he creaks.

For what reason, never knows it, but he moves the fingers of his opposite hand toward the metal side dial, and pulls it three times in swift succession.

A flat drawer extends outward. A scrap of lined paper sits within.

Overhead, Mikami chokes on his ogling stare, biting closely through the chap of his mouth with every electrified incisor.

“It’s true! You really are _God!”_

Tingles border up to his fingertips, ones that lift in interest toward the paper square, only halted in their place mid-reach by the cuff of a warning through his head.

 _Uhhh, I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,_ it spells. _Or at least go somewhere private when you do. You’re known to be a screamer._

The blood pauses in his veins.

Without thinking, his legs are straight beneath him, and the other’s wince back goes noticed and ignored.

“Mikami,” Light addresses evenly. “I think you should be going now. I’ll let you know when you can be of assistance.”

In scrambling hands, he moves to tug a business card from his frontmost pocket, laying it to the desk the same rhythm that he bows. He says something, Light’s sure by the way his mouth flaps, yet he’s nothing to say back to him or any other who should cross his path toward wherever it should lead- secrecy. For no wit of his own, his limbs are heavy as cinder strapped to the hinge joints.

The bathroom stall slams behind the weight of his back pressing against it. He could sink to his knees, cry out for theatrics, do all the things he does and what he knows is just, he could, but he finds himself wavering. The hands of his watch tick on agonizingly lethargic. One pull, two three.

The tray slides out.

He can hear his breath, feels like he sees himself from above, the way his fingers lift to tempt the space above the paper note. Breath in, never out, cool of the floor vents billowing the very edges of his bangs.

With the very tip of one finger, he reaches forth, and closes the tray back inside of the watch.

He exits the mens’ room to get back to work. Just as he should.

Someone walks by just around lunchtime and drops an envelope on his desk.

It isn’t sealed, not a conspicuous offering either with its plain white. He’s close to burning it corner to corner out of woe for its contents, anthrax perhaps, yes, but he opens it in a stroke of bravery to read the message printed within the card, signed by an older member of the force he speaks only to in passing.

Yes, that’s right. It’s his birthday today.

He’s reminded abruptly of just that once the work days ends with little gain, and the flecks of snow melt from his shoulders once the heat of their front entrance eats him alive. He shakes his hair out in idle back forths. The sun’s begun to set already. He’d taken the long way home- the nine minute way, backward through the center lights -to allow him one last breather with the day behind him, the day upon which he’s behaved with methodical aggression of which the source is unknown to him. Unknown, or ignored, either way, he refuses that side of himself, will forever more, had left the business card in the drawer of his locked work desk. Things are weird, no matter the sticky immaturity of the statement. Things are weird and he’s learned to roll with it, in this new life of his he’s never wanted, this new life where every last odd end works against him despite behaving in his favor.

A nine minute breather is all he’s needed to soak up sweetly what awaits him. Never would he spurn it, even on his worst day. Not the smell of kindness through the evening, nor the trail of rose petals guiding his footsteps from front entry to the very midst of their bedroom.

Cliche, his lover’s so deliriously cliche. That doesn’t stop his simper from widening with every step.

“L?” he says along the way. There’s a detour made in the kitchen to set his loose belongings to the countertop, the cards he’d received and the mail picked up on the driveway jaunt, keys and whatever else he’s to lose, a dip down to check if the oven’s anything for him. He finds it empty enough to carry on down the trail laid for him, nudging the grooves of their bedroom door with a palm that casts light against his face.

“You-” And for once, he finds himself...speechless, to what sits ahead. Because it’s not just the parted curtains to let the sunset inside, it’s the petals that halt exactly at the glossed toes of black dress shoes, the slacks ironed above their laces all the way to the belt, the tuck, the buttons and blazer, black tie to top it off. His hair isn’t brushed, nothing ever to be done for the dark fatigue cast in his gaunt face, but that’s all that makes him who he wants to see standing there, back angled forward, absolutely dopey in his fitted suit, out of place, yet perfectly there. All for him.

When he manages to pry his dead stare away, Light notices the presence in the corner, dressed just as formally though not seeming strange for it. And another flick over, toward their cornered armchair rests the thick warmth of gray fur, purring against the bowtie clipped afront his collar.

“Watari,” Light says first, nods to he and the cat on the chair. “Belvedere, ah...” The weak pull of his legs urge him forth despite it, far enough to grasp two hands within his own and take a long look at him toe to head. “What’s all this about?”

L tilts his jaw to the left. Words escape him, just a moment, before from his plush lips surfaces the heart.

“We have to be to your parents’ for dinner in about an hour,” he says. “I figure that’s plenty of time for a wedding.”

Light blinks to him, hollow. L’s face tips righted again. Nearly, does he look dull, yet perhaps more so exhausted in those dark eyes that never once read complaint. “I thought about it for a while, then supposed the best birthday gift you could ever get from me would be compromise.”

“I didn’t even think you knew what that word meant,” Light tells him in a grin, because he knows he’ll get away with it. Beside them, Watari’s chuckle attempts better silence.

L thrums pressure to the other’s fingers. “Right, _weeell..._ it’s not exactly the lavish celebration you wanted I’m sure, but-”

Lips, too excited for their own good, push to match against his, stopping him midway yet too enthralled to worry. “It’s amazing,” Light assures. “You look stunning. I thought you said you didn’t own a suit.”

“It took several hours of measuring before I got it tailored correctly,” pipes up from over his shoulder. Watari adjusts his frames. “But I made sure he’d be perfect for you.”

Light couldn’t agree any more. He _stares,_ just stares, maps out every contour of the love of his life, all the slouch wrinkles in his undershirt and untouched bedhead, stares at him until his throat’s about tight enough to form diamonds, and there does L speak up to chase his pandering away.

“Well,” begins off. A portion of uncertainty, foreign to touches of these shade. L shrugs in the way he lilts his offerings. “Go ahead. Marry me.”

Never does it need be told again.

Though he’s flipped it, there’s no order in this home of theirs, so there isn’t space to take ill over it now- the way he disregards the formal ceremonies set to come _before_ the kiss, it matters null to him in the lift of his hand through L’s hair, bends him at the waist _just_ so as to define it in drama, pressing their mouths together as one as their union shall clasp them on interminable mornings, noons, nights.

He thinks he hears gentle cheering. He thinks he hears a cat’s yawning stretch.

None of it matters now that he’s got just what he needs, right here, right now, furled inside the heat of their kiss.

His watch ticks deafeningly behind L’s head.


	15. Chapter 15

“What about this one? Do you like the hat, or is it too much?”

Twins sway in perfect sync, one before the other, flaunting petticoat frills and fingers pinching the brim of the sunhat tipped atop her hair. Her hips twist in a way that accentuates the curve of them. He watches her, just vaguely, as he sits atop her dark lush comforters, watches her dance about before the full length mirror, gaudy as a model’s meant to be. It is too much. It’s all too much, the pinstripe socks and nursery yellow dress. Too much.

Misa sets the hat farther back on her hair, giggles behind her fanned fingertips. “Oh, Rem, I wasn’t asking you. You always say I look beautiful, no matter what I’m wearing.”

She’s picked out boots of ankle height, ones that tap around in a circle to face him full on. Light spares a moment to look her over before his focus falls back to the floor between his feet.

“I don’t like yellow,” is his review. Something sounds short of a pouting tremble, but she turns around to pluck the hat away, shaking her hair, fluffing her hair.

“...You’re so right. I don’t either.” Layers of lace and bows line the dress. He thinks it’d fit better one of his sister’s dolls. “My manager booked me with a lolita designer, and he said he doesn’t do gothic stuff. I still think it’s a pretty dress, just not my style. Maybe I could pass the job off to Ayumi. It’s less publicity for me, but I know she’d look better in this. What do you think?”

His stare blows a crater into her carpeting. He’s leant forward, a touch, hands clasped between his spread knees. The feel of her bed beneath him is foreign, yet he could only for so long stand in the corner watching her flaunt around before exhaustion set into every last fascicle. Perhaps then in that tire he should have found escape. But he didn’t. He sat down on her bed, on the edge, and watched. He’d only come over with a question in his mouth, ready to toss it just as soon as he could. But he didn’t. He sat down on her bed.

“Or maybe Marie, she’s not as pretty as the other girls so she gets the least job opportunities. Wearing something big and flashy like this would distract from how crooked her nose is.”

Fingers wring against each other. If he’s here, it’s for a purpose. One with scandal nowhere near the tabloid typical, no raunchy rendezvous for he and a side lover, only the tempt of his voice commanding her actions, willing her every thought. But he’s not using her, not a pawn in whatever game it is he’s tripped himself up within- an accomplice, perfectly autonomous if she chooses. Light does not use her because he does not need to use her. He only needs answers. To figure out what sort of sickness has twisted the pair of them. No one else in the world would understand him. He needs answers from her. He needs her. He needs to know and needs to ask. And he will. And he stands up from her sweetly pressed comforters that offer none at all.

“I think if I just-”

“Misa.” His head hands low enough to shade away the petals of her stare. “Could you just be quiet?”

Whatever words were set to be birthed die in infancy as she swallows them back. The stark white of her face does not pass him, the clink of the silver chain bracelets decorating her wrists. She obeys him there and forever. Not another word.

He looks to her in finality, and steps close enough to cup her jaw.

“I need you to do me a favor,” his deep silken voice purrs out. She’s well past melted in his hands- she’s evaporated into the air he breathes. “A man visited me at my office a few days ago. I need you to tell me everything you remember about Mikami Teru.”

“Mikami...Teru..?” When his palms slide down to cup her shoulders, press her an arm’s length away and rest on her pale warmth, she takes in stride those touches, feelings, and turns her face to one side as grief overcomes it. “I’m sorry...I’ve never heard that name before. I don’t remember.”

A dissatisfied scoff flicks below his breath, but he does not give up on her in rush; hands grasp her shoulders still, demanding her eyes, demanding she look harder and push deeper. Anything for him, he _needs_ it. In one glance upward of lilies on her lips, she delivers to him her worth.

“But, by a few days ago, do you mean, like, last Thursday?”

He stares a while, calculating his move, before one nod blesses her. Misa blooms into amour.

“That’s exactly when that woman visited me,” she gasps. “She said her name was Takada Kiyomi, and she was recommending the makeup artist that works with her on her news station set. And then she handed me a business card, except she’d written a note on the back of it-”

“What did it say?”

Flinching, Misa tightens her fingers before her. “...I still have it,” draws her away for no longer than a pace to catch her purse by the strap on its hook, dig through it a moment that brings her right back into place. Light takes the card into his hand.

_I know that you love Kira. I want to love him too._

“Misa...why didn’t you tell me about this days ago?” From the note he snaps his eyes that seethe with salience. Before them, her mouth drops into a frown, fingers pressing their tips to each other.

“Because...well...because Rem said I shouldn’t trust her! That’s why.”

Another look. Another scoff. “She also said you shouldn’t trust me.”

Misa’s shoulders stiffen back, guilt reading across her. “Well...that’s different! You’re my boyfriend, and Takada’s just some tramp!” Her arms fold solidly over her chest, huffing her lids closed again. “I didn’t want to give you that message, because I don’t want you seeing her. You shouldn’t be seeing any other girls!”

A chord strikes inside his chest.

He glances at the card. _I want to love him too._

With one motion, his chin lifts, and the note crumbles up inside a fist.

“Don’t worry, Misa. I have no intention of seeing Takada.”

The breeze cast from his turn around delights her glowing beam, following the pull of his shoulder through the curtain toward the den beyond it. Every motion is a domino breathed upon. Light walks, Misa walks. Light thinks, Misa may, or she may be stewing in her adoration too much to believe in the idea of it. But Light thinks, thinks about notes and the letters and the fawning so tight it suffocates him from all angles. He thinks about every perfect test score and every college begging for him, thinks about his mother’s affections and father’s praise that all grew weary as the years walked on; he considers the likelihood of his failures in the past, in his present past and the all the ones before it. He thinks about the birthday cake set on the table before him with wedding bells so fresh in his head he hardly could taste the frosting. Wondering, too, how often it’ll be he finds his life in such a winding spiral again, if his memories are fabricated and every day of his life is January the twenty eighth where he walks to work and the strawberries are untouchably ripe.

He thinks about the piece of paper in his watch. He thinks about the blood on his hands. He thinks about how he’s had his mind to himself for a while now, and wonders just who exactly is controlling who.

He’d think more, too, were he not interrupted by the nudging against his shin.

A skinny black tail curls around his legs as the animal passes him, rubbing fur along his slacks the whole traipse by.

“That’s nice,” Light says. “My father-in-law has a cat, too.”

What reaction strangles her, he isn’t beguiled enough to be certain, though when he lifts from his pocket a silver band to return home upon his third finger, he hopes she’s watching closely enough to dip the color from her flesh.

“If you don’t want to be reconsidered as a suspect in the Kira investigation, then you shouldn’t contact me again.” His steps echo as the outside Light creeps upon his exit. “It’ll look way too suspicious.”

Leaving the dark behind him, the cinnamon, the false candlelight, the door slams with him, the last breath of life from her the slow collapse to either pinstripe knee.

Brunet billows with the open sunroof wind. Sunlight hazels his arms and neck. The radio is on, his lips are silent, his heart- it pounds.

“Sorry, that took longer than I thought.” A tray places softly to the corner of his desk. He leaves a bag beside it, pulling from it one even smaller, and from that there a white stick to thrust forward, icing coated outside blurring before the eyes that prod it. “They were cleaning the espresso machine.”

The stick is plucked from him into two fingers. By the time Light returns from distributing coffee orders to their rightful few, the cake on the end has vanished, stick dropped to the desktop, fingertips busy along computer keys. Tightness riddles him.

“Hey,” and he sits, places a drink beside L’s working hands. They pause only once a tapping finds his arm. L shifts himself in such as a way as to grant just what’s wanted there, the heat of his attention, which Light grabs up in gusto with a smile on his face, one that leans forward to press against its match.

L remains unmoved as the kiss is accepted. Tasting it a while there, resting, he reaches out to grasp his drink, and with the straw an inch from his waiting lips says, “You smell like lavender,” and sucks on a long drawn sip.

Light french kisses an inhale. A phone in the muted ambiance rattles with urgency. A door creaks open and closes somewhere far off. Someone behind them coughs. Keyboard clicks. Clock ticks. Time.

In rusted drags of himself, L turns to look at him, solemn somewhere within those eyes, somewhere Light’s no passport to.

“Don’t you ever get tired of repeating yourself?” L asks him. Through every divot of him, it’s tempestuous. “Tell me, Light, from the moment you were born, has there ever been a point where you've actually told the truth?”

Bright white, piercing, silence that pokes first the skin then the meat and blood of humanity. His twinned lungs fail in perfect sync. Shadows cling to the wet soak of his dry clothing.

“What are you talking about? Where is this coming from?” A single scrape draws his chair back from beneath him, arms straining to hold him against the desk’s lip, clenching, hot in the face to choke the words down like razor laced cough syrup.

L stares at him. Matsuda and Mogi and Ukita and everyone he cannot name lift their heads from their work to stare at him. The whole world stares.

“...I said, you smell like lavender,” crashes down on his wobbling shoulders. “That’s all.”

Hesitation held, Light doesn’t wish to peer around. Veins protrude from the wrist that lifts just beneath his nose. One soft sniff.

“Oh.” Ringing transfers ear to ear, pulling his seat back under himself, straight and proper, smiles with only his mouth. “You’re right, I kinda do.”

A phone rings somewhere. To him, he hears a child’s cry. His eyes blink together, and the noise is gone, no ringing or crying or typing or ticking. No stares. Every last ocean fills the inside of his skull.

“Light…” pretends to be his name. But it spills forth from the concern dripping over him, tilted like the stupid puppy he always takes the comparison for, but it spills from Matsuda who’s looming above his desk now, lid corners squinted to account for his cautious wince. “Hey, are you okay? Wanna get some fresh air?”

He studies him for error. A glance to L that is not reciprocated. He looks back.

The chair beneath him pushes back outward.

“Want a smoke?” The wind licks his cheek, enough to curl a finger up and tuck hair behind an ear. It isn’t so blinding if he doesn’t look upward, keeping himself steady on the pavement within the melted winter. The station sits quietly in the shadow behind their backs. He’s cold. When the question extends out for him, Light is tentative, yet reaches regardless to slide a Marlboro from the pack and stick it between his lips. Matsuda tucks them back inside an inner coat pocket. A curious look raises to it.

“Oh, me? I don’t smoke, I just keep some on me to impress the guys on the force,” he explains as he hands over a lighter. “My grandma would _kill_ me if I came home smelling like cigarettes.”

For the courtesy of it, Light takes one step away as he flicks the flame up behind his cupped hands.

“Sooo...have you done anything fun lately? How’ve you been feeling?”

Wind thins his eyes, cigarette tip glowing just off his face, exhaling the slow pour of smoke around himself. Toe to toe with a serial murderer, and his only question is how his week’s been going.

That’s the first time he thinks he’s succumbed to self admission. He hasn’t believed it before, hasn’t understood how deeply exhaustion has affected him as to deceive him this way, for so long, so harsh. But again, it couldn’t be true- he’d never. He’s justice. He’s never touched malfeasance, not from a hundred yards away, not blindfolded nor spun around thrice. Righteousness doesn’t rest with a Yagami on the case. And if Matsuda, all that’s good left in his reach- not good in the way he likes but good in the way the world needs, _goodness,_ pure wedding white goodness -if Matsuda believes in him, then, there’s no way he’s dirtied. He’s sick. That’s all, and Misa, too. But less so than he, for she’s true residency in the damned. She’s fooled him, and yet, still he has come the victor. If Matsuda believes in him, then everything’s alright.

 _Oh, right. I forgot to mention,_ perks him for the first time in forever long. The voice sounds heavy with quiet, scratching the corner ridges of surrender. _That guy? He shot you. About five or six times. Right through the heart._ Ryuk guffaws hyperbole in a yawn. _Anyways, I’m going back to bed. See ya._

The outline of a form fades back against his vision, one lingering in wait, benevolent, _good._

“...I’ve been having a lot of strange thoughts lately,” Light answers, and flicks ash unto the pavement.

Matsuda watches him a while, lips parted as if wondering his role, missing the line for beauty’s sake. Then, with the change of trees green to amber, he straightens to offer his best confidence.

“That’s okay. You’ve got a stressful job, especially with that promotion. You’re bound to have _some_ bad feelings.” His grin pairs to a nod quick and strong. “I’m sure L can help you sort those out, and anybody else you want to talk to. But...either way,” some vague sense of shelter trembles across his mouth. “No matter what, I know you’ll get through it. You’re our Light.”

He pauses as the air falls quiet. Down the street tips one car. He breathes with the cooled coming springtime, dropping the cigarette to crush beneath his step.

“Thank you,” he says, not meeting his eyes but rather focusing on the clasp of metal at his left wrist. A nail fiddles with the latch, peeling it up to relieve himself of the weight. “I want you to have this. I don’t think I could trust anybody else with it.”

“Huh, your watch?” Both palms cup together to allow the metal be laid there. Several ticks rain by before his surprise falls away. “Wow, thanks, Light… I don’t know how I can accept this, it’s a really awesome gift-”

“No worries,” he assures, hands to either hip pocket as he strolls back toward the entry. “It’s my pleasure. In fact, I think it’ll help me get over some of the stuff I’ve been dealing with.”

His shadow holds the door for him. They weave down the hall to find again their space, though he exists only aware of who he feels he is then, walking on blank black that feels like it is there so certainly must be, a maze up until the center prize that is his own work desk, one half pristine whilst the other strews as messy as the man crouched up over it. The one Light is guided toward such as magnets to their opposite end, feeling the seat that must be there to claim him in rest.

L looks at him. Light looks back.

It’s a windy day to call winter’s close, crisp enough inside to make a cool drink sweat against the paper it sits on. The screens are dull with lines of type. No phones ring now, though when they do it is only to spin tales of what could have been.

There is no pressure on his bruised shoulder blades. The tip of his left finger boasts a suture line that thins by the days.

He clenches his hand into a fist, scuffs oxygen, unclenches.

Softly go his lashes into slumber upon each other, and his head is no longer too throbbing to hope it touch against the shoulder tempting just to his left. Breathing, _alive,_ he lays there with weight leant upon L until, he predicts, a nudge shall shoo him smart.

The motion never finds him.

Perhaps he’s finally resting.


	16. Chapter 16

“I’ve been thinking about wonton soup since ten o’clock this morning.”

He stands, somewhat a pallbearer in his black button up tucked into black slacks, somewhat but foremost the sleek badass of the hour dressed so crisply. The shadows of music trace his back. “Let’s get dinner. I’ll go pick it up.” 

No room to argue, plainly clear, Light’s already got his finger hooked through his keyring before the other has even the chance to shift himself from the horizontal curl across the sofa cushions. One cheek pressed flat, L muffles out, “The Chinese place you like is twenty minutes away.”

Either palm rests to his belt. “That’s okay, it’s still early enough.” Then, a glance around, surveying his wrist to find its flesh only pale, and he shakes his head once before meeting again the tired color of his other. “...Come for the ride. Keep me company.”

It’s hardly escaped him fore groaning intones back. Light perks the thinnest smile as he steps forward to tug on heavy hands. “You are definitely the laziest person I’ve ever met.” He manages no budge. “Come on, I know you’ll just fall asleep in the car, anyway. I’ll even put in your Britney CD. That’s how bad I want you.”

“Compelling,” L murmurs, and in a moment’s time allows himself be hefted upward with a labored noise to guide it. “Two egg rolls-”

“And pork lo mein, I know, I know.” Light’s laughing as he ushers them both for the front exit. “Not only are you lazy, you’re high maintenance too, but at least your restaurant orders never change.”

The gravel of their driveway comes beneath them. “You know just how to sweet talk me, my love.”

Touch to the driver side handle, Light stares at him over the top of his car, still with that humor tempting his lips, still with those memories grazing his eyes. 

“I just know you better than you think.”


	17. Chapter 17

Work starts at eleven:fifteen on Thursdays.

That’s a special rule set in place for their Sergeant, allows him the time to have his time that he’s allowed then, but he’s perfectly on time so always, some days walking in with his tail tucked low, some days with gasoline poured on his passion.

Today, he’s somewhere in between. And that’s okay.

“How was your appointment?” flirts with him once he’s clocked his card in, pulling his chair in toward their desk as the break room coffee laps against its styrofoam boundaries. The voice is a low sooth, careful in the polite confines of business overlapping love.

“It went alright,” Light tells him, nodding once after a thought over. “I got to talk about a lot of stuff today. I mentioned when Sayu and I would have snow days from school, and the time I beat her so many times in Wii Tennis she started _actually_ beating me with the controllers.” Some sort of devilry only capable of a perfect older brother whisks over him. “We weren’t allowed to play Wii anymore after that.”

“Good to see you’re getting to the bottom of your deep-rooted psychological trauma.” L’s profile quirks with smirking sarcasm. Light would kiss it bruised were he not a businessman.

He can sense new fortune on the horizon ahead. Because he'd gone in for his shift one morning before and opened his drawer and there'd been nothing inside but pens and strewn notes of no value. Because he'd crumpled the other one up in his hand yet has no muscle memory of it. Because he's alone at night in the bed he shares, so for all of it, it hurts and he needs it, and lies can be spun so easily as his mind hearing what's never been coughed. But it'll be better. Medically he’s taken the steps forth into healing, emotionally coming to follow suit soon once he’s courage enough to face it. But he’s well. He’s fine that’s beginning to bleed down inside to truth. Picking at scabs is never advised, though to do so now and pull the stitches free and rip the bandages off- he needs it now. He needs healing from what he won’t admit and refuses the accepting of. For now. He’s healing.

Then the side office archway is gripped upon with flying hands, breath wheezed from sprint, and Light could perhaps feel there is just a bit of glass in his sock.

“Turn on the TV,” Ide gasps out in a bark. “Sakura TV. Fast.”

In all his years Light’s never seen such a reaction from the most normally reserved self of Ide Hideki, the first key in to illness under his skin. Over a corner, Aizawa stands to fiddle with the buttons on the underside of the newly innovated flat wall television until static pushes the correct channel up to bat. Souichirou steps from his office door just beside it to gander on. Light chokes on his astonishment.

“ _-know who you are,”_ the speakers catch the very end of. _“But you don’t have to worry. I won’t reveal your identity, I promise. That would mean betraying your trust, and revealing myself as the second Kira as well.”_

He doesn’t have time to wonder if a jaw dropped gape is appropriate of someone with nothing to worry over. There’s no movement over the whole room as the garbled message plays on.

 _“Kira. I forgive you for what you did to me. I’m sorry for making so many assumptions. And if you’re upset by this message, just know I had no other choice. You told me not to contact you directly anymore, but I just needed to talk to you, even if it’s just this one last time.”_ There’s a pause there where only a soft breath in can be heard, and the deep, disguised voice surges back in elan. _“I love you, Kira. Even if I can’t have you the way I want, my devotion to you is the same. I will forever be your eyes in every life we find each other.”_

The broadcast cuts to silence, cursive looping emblem lingering a moment until the face of a news anchor replaces it. _“A message from the mysterious second Kira! You heard it here, a Sakura TV exclusive-”_

“S...Second Kira?” Matsuda’s mouth hangs as an oval of white shock. The others, gathered round to watch on, fade against their own blank disbelief. “Who...Who could’ve sent this?!”

As though in unison, the loitering members of the force strike glances over toward him, to which Light gags with fever until he calms himself to note his desk is shared and superiority higher takes priority in fear. He mimics them to ping a peer toward L’s panic stricken look. With haste, it runs down for power to replace it.

“Seize those tapes immediately,” he directs. “Go to the Sakura network headquarters. We need every shred of evidence we can get off them.”

Obedience claims Souchirou’s rapid movements. “Understood! I’ll retrieve everything I can.”

Hustle begins around them as several phone lines spring to life, Ukita rushing forward to accompany his chief’s trek off, swivet burning the bottoms of every tongue. Light swallows hard. Every last horror battles themselves within his soul.

“...L,” he chooses to say, teeth feeling salted, playing make believe calm among the brewing storm that taunts them. The other just barely acknowledges him, wrapped up in swiping research across his computer screen as to recent postal records around Kanto. Light speaks just above a whispering. “How do you know they’re tapes? How do you know the video wasn’t just...emailed, or something, to the news station?”

L’s hair brushes across his hunched shoulders in a turn of the head. As he does in interest, his lids sit pressed back to bear the full extension of his eyes. A dead look.

“I’m certain,” is all he says, and twists back to his work.

The calendar pages of Light’s head flip readily forward.

He’s healing. And he hadn’t been worrying much at all about it. But, that’s right, yes, it would have been years ago. It would have.

If he had time to be sick over it, he would be, but there’s just so many other things that stuff soap in his mouth now. Like idiocy. Pure, fiery idiocy that scrapes up his knees like a skateboarding accident.

His father returns with video tapes sealed in plastic.

L spends two days with hardly his hands taken off them.

The sleeping schedule that’d just been fixed turns over on its head again, and a Thursday morning ten AM can’t come quick enough.

“Light…” mumbles out the corner of wondering lips one night. The table before them is a violent mess of papers and petri dishes. Tweezers pinch, from within the dying glue of the envelope flap, the finest fraction of a blonde hair fiber. “How confident, exactly, were you that Amane Misa has absolutely no part in this case?”

Life runs another rotation on its wheel. He should refill his brain’s water bottle soon. It’s getting hard to breathe.

The interrogation chambers are dim with what lamplight coats it. This time, he stays on the outside of the glass, just watching, arms folded inward and one hand over his mouth, with ache studying the show before him. This time, he stays on the outside of the glass, and on the inside just one sat center focus, hands folded sweetly in her lap not at all minding the cuffs around them, expression the sunshine a garden craves. She’s alone in there, freely sat upon one chair without the same bounds as before, yet no more trust this second time. Light tightens his temples back as he watches her lips move around soundproofed truths. The transmitter on the table before her buzzes with questions come from whichever room L has chosen as his base for the moment, yet she could care less were he right before her eyes, because all that matters to her is the deep scarlet accents on the leather of her dress where Light’s gaze trails, the clench of him there, all to observe and report her, _her._

After what feels a thousand heartbeats, blonde hangs in curtains around her dipped head, drawing her body up from the waist first for stocking’d legs to guide her nearer to the door. As the meeting’s appointed supervisor, Light takes it as his cue to unlock the chamber knob to allow her out into the white of the hallway.

For several thick seconds, she does not speak.

It takes only that long for tears to brew down her lashes.

“Oh, Light, I’m so sorry about everything.” Her ponytails ruffle with the shake of herself. He draws back a step to examine her, bound wrists and all, which rise up toward him. “He said you can uncuff me now. Apparently I’m not in real trouble anymore, but he wants to keep me under twenty four hour surveillance. How _creepy_.”

Light can’t recall the section in his law enforcement textbooks that said to believe suspects who tell him they’re allowed to be released, though regardless does he find his pocket emptied of an ounce enough to free her cuffs away. She stretches her arms outward as he says to her in hush, “That was all careless of you, Misa. You left a ton of evidence behind on those tapes. I don’t know how L could have believed whatever you told him in there.”

The cherry gloss of her lips pouts down. One fingertip pokes to it. “Well...maybe it’s not such a bad thing that he found my DNA or whatever. At least that means I get to be called here and see you.”

“Misa…” He could growl, but softness outweighs. He shifts a look around above one shoulder. “It doesn’t matter either way, because you and I _aren’t_ Kira. No matter what our memories are telling us, there’s no way we could be killing all these people now without knowing it. I’m still not even convinced that any of this is real, I think we could both benefit from clinical attention if you ask me.”

“But how could we both have just gone crazy in the exact same way? And what about Takada, and the other man who visited you? And if L has all the same memories, too-”

“He doesn’t,” Light sharply cuts in. “I don’t care about Takada or Mikami, or anybody else who might be brainwashed into thinking the same things. None of that matters. I know I would never murder someone. It goes against everything I know. The only thing that’s important in this world is justice.”

A boot heel echoes a step back. She gives him a look of tension. “...You’re so right,” she breathes out, the alarm in her eyes spelling otherwise. “But...I think there’s lots of other important things, too. Like... _love_.” Sweetness returns to her face as she giggles behind her fingers. “You must know that, though. ...Your wife is so lucky to have gotten to you first this time.”

She’s distracting him. He sits on the hardened balls of either foot, at the ready to pounce for escape should he see it fit. At his hip one hand weaves into a slow fist, motions she mistakes all for a blunder’s cause where she goes to mend with a pathetic looking smile. “Oh, I mean, your spouse. Whoever is lucky enough to have my Light. It’s 2012, afterall.”

Light gnaws his lip. A shadow rounds the corner.

They glance the same measure up toward L’s appearance approaching them, slow and measured, until he’s beside the both of them enough to take gazes up, down.

“...You’re free to go whenever you like,” he says aloud with no particular focus. “As the supervisor in your newly reopened case, I can’t authorize Light to take you home, but I’ll have someone escort you if need be.”

Misa peels a long look upon Light, smile overcoming her just in time to turn away. “That’s alright, I can call my manager.” Her kind heart reaches then to grasp L by the hand in both her own. “Thank you so much for trusting what I had to say, Mister L, I know you’ll still be watching me, but I-”

Only does she pause for disturbance’s sake, that of her focus shifting down a fraction long enough to note upon the hand she holds there lying a glint of silver. And it wouldn’t strike her so much, he thinks, had it not been so recent a focus, had it not been the very same cut to match the next set of fingers she flits her scrutiny to, from there to the grim face of its owner.

She releases him just to fold her arms over her stomach, double forward, and laugh herself to tears.

“Misa-” Light barks, gritting together his back teeth so hard the enamel shreds. He’d like to grip her by the zipper and yank her back straightened, though something guides him better; he stands, watching her, until she wobbles up to almost dignified again.

Beside him, L’s eyes are wide, and he’s grinning in that way of his that’s just so _strange_ with one finger tracing its length.

“You two- you’re _married!”_ Misa points. Behind her outburst, something brews akin to loss, that of oneself through a foggy ocean afternoon, and that of the third button on a favorite blouse. “All along, it’s been... _you.”_

The pair of them make her a museum piece. She defies the red rope barrier by pressing forth to clasp her arms tight up over two shoulders, and for some uncouth reason, Light feels slighted to be the onlooker.

A lip gloss mark boggle’s the pale of L’s cheek. “I’m so glad to know Light has someone who can make him happy. Make sure you take care of him, alright? No accusing him of mass murder, ‘kay?”

“ _Misa-”_

“I’ll...try my best,” says L and the fingers pressed to where his cheekbone has warmed.

Light, green at the edges and gravid through the center, follows her all the way out of sight, heels clicking until they can no more.

He hears them still in his mind, echoes, all the coming days where their kitchen table is no place for home. Papers stack, some in their folders some spilling, careening over across the surface of the wood with his computer propped up precariously on part. The screen sits tilted in a way that evades the sun, notebook lines beneath his pencil graphite every so often he can spare a glance away from the monitor. All the while he obsesses, Light bothers his attention over him, over every bite of a fingertip and scratch of notes on the page. Behind him, shoes tap benignly, and the empty mug beside L is poured to the brim in boiled milk, chocolate powder stirred with a thin metal spoon that swirls another half rotation after its release. Watari moves to offer Light the same treatment. Polite in his motions, he declines, organs gnawed too raw to wish such a heavy serving.

A call of his name pulls him from the idle wonderings. He glances to the computer screen a while, the bedroom where golden hair is brushed out before a mirror and skinny black paws twist through ankles, before he accepts the questioning offered. “How do you say _oneiromancy_ in Japanese? Do you have a word for that?”

He blinks away what fog had settled. “...What do you need to know a word like that for?”

L’s lips pucker outward as he stirs his drink, forms a quiet hurricane in its midst. “I take my personal notes in English. It’s easier for me that way, but I’m curious nonetheless.” He sips one warm second. “You know,” he says afterward, “if you can’t tell what I’m saying, it’s alright.”

With a shake of his head, Light leans inward, “Say it again.” A repetition, slower to each foreign syllable, sets him sitting back again. “It’s…”

Licking chocolate from his lips, L turns them up at one bastardly corner, tells him, “You’re adorable,” and goes back to watching the surveillance monitor.

Thursday can’t come soon enough.


	18. Chapter 18

When it does next, he arrives to the station past noon, the whole room desolate for midday break and looking almost eerie with only L crouched there before his mess of work. Yet, he sat aside him, no hesitation, accepted the lift of a brow, because he’d expected it, and the whole car ride had been spent hemming together what he’d tell in place of candor once prompted to know where he’s been. Pulling into his usual spot, he’d had it there in his hand, and once he’d sat aside him, and accepted that curiosity there, it’d dismantled all to shreds in the breeze through his hollow conscience.

“I ran over my appointment time,” he says to the empty air. “She said it was alright. She was really interested in what I had to say today.”

And though L is not a gossip nor prier, boundaries sometimes do not exist in his socially infantile mind, and as he lilts off, “Which was..?”, Light tightens, but has no aversion for it. His tongue sips the dry from his lips before he speaks in clemency to his own self.

“I said I...was doubting myself a lot lately. These past few months.” Every letter plucks a pound off his ribs. “And that impacted my trust for other people. Especially...you. But, don’t worry. I think I understand what my problem is.”

For him alone, the keyboard has not been touched, nothing fiddled with, and Light notices and Light could just about implode from how genuine a sentiment it is to be paid such close focus to now as he tattoos all four chambers on his left bicep. In softness, L responds back, “If I’ve done anything to make you doubt my sincerity, you’re free to let me know.”

“No, no,” Light is quick to assure. His head shakes itself. “Like I said...I think I know what’s been bothering me. ...Have you ever heard of stress induced psychosis?”

L does not react in such ghastly dramatics as one may. He isn’t afraid of the word, like it’s some sort of vial tipped of venom, like it’s going to jump off his lips and rip his innards out. Merely, he’s L, and he sits there silently as he absorbs what is said to him. Plain and polite. Casual, as one should with intellect be.

“Yes,” L says back, though less so does Light feel it an answer and rather the bridge to his next orating. “In fact, I’ve been waiting for you to realize how bad it’d gotten for you.”

Were his face a mirror, the shards would shatter down over his chest.

“Wh-?”

“Hey, Light, you’re back!” The archway toward the hall fills suddenly with the shape of Matsuda’s zeal. He stuffs half his mouth in a bite before continuing, “We ordered pizza for lunch. You should come have some.”

Fore he’s vanished again, Light is able to offer a nod, feeble cut of it disregarded. They’re left alone again despite his slim wish otherwise, if he’s to collect himself quick enough to deal with whatever could be said to him now; but rather, it is not words first, just the lift of warmth to find his hand and hold it, and he doesn’t blame L and his horrible shyness for having to rest his forehead down upon Light’s shoulder before it can be said out loud his feelings to follow.

“...I love you. I would like you to feel comfortable talking to me when things are bothering you like that.” As he lifts his face again, Light notices the faintest pink to it, though L claims boldness by the horns for him then. “You’ll be alright. Give yourself some time.”

He stares, eyes losing sharpness enough to signal surprise, but he’s swift for composure. Breaths squeeze high within his shoulders, and just as he leaning inward, his kiss meets the abandoned air whilst L’s already paces away across the floor. His back disappears around the archway. Light blinks.

There’s something perfect about the way L massages all the knots from his back without ever once touching him. That’s just exactly where Light’s heart has been caught all these years and all this time, why he could never justify clocking out early yet always had a twinge of ache to be away from home past dark- and then no more had he to worry about that, and now every second is spent together very practically and they say don’t mix business with pleasure but business is pleasure and pleasure business to him, all the same, always, and he’ll get that kiss he’s owed back later. Right now, he’d just like to sit.

Tension still pinches on occasion when a particular thought will hit him, but while they sting, he’s got clean white sheets to fall back on that are warm on one side. He’s got life to rely on. And maybe it’s been real and maybe it’s been fake, maybe a diagnosis is a substitute for believing the unbelievable, maybe he’s never had a moment where he’s truly been alive until riddled with sickness or the fire of real life curse, but just perhaps it’s only living to be living well.

“What the fuck,” he hears as he rises to approach toward the hall entry. “Matsuda, did you eat all the wings?”

“...I might’ve.”

“You ate them all.”

“...I might’ve.”

Admiring onward in his contemplation can only last so delicate. But, truly, it never stops, not where every moment is a part on its own to click together and build the thousand piece jigsaw of Yagami Light.

Though, he may omit the _oofing_ pain of a fist socked in the stomach that sounds from the hallway down.

“L, come on,” Light sighs as his steps mingle down toward the breakroom. “Don’t beat up Matsuda over chicken wings again.”

Echoes are his finality.

It’s about living, wonderfully, and he’s just wonderful at living any sort of moment thrown his way. Of course he is. Afterall, he’s their light.

Wonderful.


	19. Chapter 19

A drink poured down the kitchen drain is a victory to him.

It’s a waste, and the smell drives him wild for a minute, but a victory all the same.

The table he turns round toward, once the glass is rinsed and hung downside up, no longer fills so vastly with _work_ as it had in weeks passed, only the crumbs and spills that mark life’s presence. Light sighs, broad and bold and through the mouth, bending at the waist to sweep just about half a goddamned cupcake into his palm. They shed away into the trash bin. He runs his hands beneath the tap, dries them on a towel that he uses next to wash along the surface of the wood. Just because he’s there. Just because he can.

He’d mopped the tile in swift beautiful streaks just yesterday, though something attempts to cajole him into it already again, perhaps those crumbs he’d wiped or the table he’d cleaned- and that’s just it. He likes his things, while he has them, to remain pristine. Such irony, considering his most favorite thing he has could be a runner up just behind a muddy pawed husky through a linen exhibit for the messiest picture show on Earth. And so blue is he to walk through their downstairs bounds and find he the only soldier, but he’d told his father he needed a break for a reason and appointed a muddy husky as sergeant for the day. Light thinks he’s earned it, afterall, what with such strides have been made in the investigation as of recent. Spotlights point toward a big city corporation group with too much money to burn. As of recent, he’s been breathing.

The kitchen is clean and he’s got the day to himself, in his soft gray jogging suit fit to do nothing of the sort, wandering the hall toward the bedroom cologne, peeking inside where the bed is made at every corner and not one square inch of dust has a home. He pads again out toward the windows’ natural light. At an hour as this, he’ll have himself a while of silence, of being alone, and that in itself is just it- alone time. He needs it. After everything that’s stirred up so quickly behind him, he needs it. Knowing it can exist for now the way he is, he needs it, with stability the newfound catalyst.

If someone should come to touch him now, he’ll have a dozen prepared exitways that involve no muscles tangled.

He doesn’t have to listen to what does not compel him.

Walking back through the kitchen, socks delicate against the clean tile, he repeats it over in his head. He does not have to listen. He has all he knows is tangible and sweet. Anything else, a mere succedaneum.

In truth, above all, with this new health he’s gripped for himself, it was all mute. For all he knows, a sleep-deprived state of delirium, a weaving nightmare from which he wakes cold and tactless on January the twenty ninth’s midnight dark.

That’s all, he thinks, just a bad dream.

And he could be wrong- and he is. And he’s right, too, and he’s law and order and day and night and life. And he’s wrong. And he’s Light.

From the bowl on the counter, he lifts the skin of an apple to his front teeth to break through in one tearing bite.


End file.
